time to refresh themselves by good, honest sleeping. For the
present, therefore, we will not concern ourselves with the

starting of the Rescue Party, nor with Mrs. Milton's simple but
becoming grey dress, with the healthy Widgery's Norfolk jacket

and thick boots, with the slender Dangle's energeticbearing, nor
with the wonderful chequerings that set off the legs of the

golf-suited Phipps. They are after us. In a little while they
will be upon us. You must imagine as you best can the competitive

raidings at Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps. How Widgery
was great at questions, and Dangle good at inference, and Phipps

so conspicuously inferior in everything that he felt it, and
sulked with Mrs. Milton most of the day, after the manner of your

callow youth the whole world over. Mrs. Milton stopped at the
Angel and was very sad and charming and intelligent, and Widgery

paid the bill. in the afternoon of Saturday, Chichester was
attained. But by that time our fugitives--As you shall

immediately hear.
THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER

XXVII
Mr. Hoopdriver stirred on his pillow, opened his eyes, and,

staring unmeaningly, yawned. The bedclothes were soft and
pleasant. He turned the peaked nose that overrides the

insufficient moustache, up to the ceiling, a pinkish projection
over the billow of white. You might see it wrinkle as he yawned

again, and then became quiet. So matters remained for a space.
Very slowly recollection returned to him. Then a shock of

indeterminate brown hair appeared, and first one watery grey eye
a-wondering, and then two ; the bed upheaved, and you had him,

his thin neck projecting abruptly from the clothes he held about
him, his face staring about the room. He held the clothes about

him, I hope I may explain, because his night-shirt was at Bognor
in an American-cloth packet, derelict. He yawned a third time,

rubbed his eyes, smacked his lips. He was recalling almost
everything now. The pursuit, the hotel, the tremulousdaring of

his entry, the swift adventure of the inn yard, the
moonlight--Abruptly he threw the clothes back and rose into a

sitting position on the edge of the bed. Without was the noise of
shutters being unfastened and doors unlocked, and the passing of

hoofs and wheels in the street. He looked at his watch. Half-past
six. He surveyed the sumptuous room again.

"Lord!" said Mr. Hoopdriver. "It wasn't a dream, after all."
"I wonder what they charge for these Juiced rooms!" said Mr.

Hoopdriver, nursing one rosy foot.
He became meditative, tugging at his insufficient moustache.

Suddenly he gave vent to a noiseless laugh. "What a rush it was!
Rushed in and off with his girl right under his nose. Planned it

well too. Talk of highway robbery! Talk of brigands Up and off!
How juiced SOLD he must be feeling It was a shave too--in the

coach yard!"
Suddenly he became silent. Abruptly his eyebrows rose and his jaw

fell. "I sa-a-ay!" said Mr. Hoopdriver.
He had never thought of it before. Perhaps you will understand

the whirl he had been in overnight. But one sees things clearer
in the daylight. "I'm hanged if I haven't been and stolen a

blessedbicycle."
"Who cares?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, presently, and his face

supplied the answer.
Then he thought of the Young Lady in Grey again, and tried to put

a more heroiccomplexion on the business. But of an early
morning, on an empty stomach (as with characteristic coarseness,

medical men put it) heroics are of a more difficult growth than
by moonlight. Everything had seemed exceptionally fine and

brilliant, but quite natural, the evening before.
Mr. Hoopdriver reached out his hand, took his Norfolk jacket,

laid it over his knees, and took out the money from the little
ticket pocket. " Fourteen and six-half," he said, holding the

coins in his left hand and stroking his chin with his right. He
verified, by patting, the presence of a pocketbook in the breast

pocket. "Five, fourteen, six-half," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Left."
With the Norfolk jacket still on his knees, he plunged into

another silent meditation. "That wouldn't matter," he said. "It's
the bike's the bother.

"No good going back to Bognor.
"Might send it back by carrier, of course. Thanking him for the

loan. Having no further use--" Mr. Hoopdriver chuckled and lapsed
into the silent concoction of a delightfully impudent letter.

"Mr. J. Hoopdriver presents his compliments." But the grave note
reasserted itself.

"Might trundle back there in an hour, of course, and exchange
them. MY old crock's so blessedshabby. He's sure to be spiteful

too. Have me run in, perhaps. Then she'd be in just the same old
fix, only worse. You see, I'm her Knight-errant. It complicates

things so."
His eye, wandering loosely, rested on the sponge bath. "What the

juice do they want with cream pans in a bedroom?" said Mr.
Hoopdriver, en passant.

"Best thing we can do is to set out of here as soon as possible,
anyhow. I suppose she'll go home to her friends. That bicycle is

a juicy nuisance, anyhow. Juicy nuisance!"
He jumped to his feet with a sudden awakening of energy, to

proceed with his toilet. Then with a certain horror he remembered
that the simple necessaries of that process were at

Bognor!"Lord!" he remarked, and whistled silently for a space.
"Rummy go! profit and loss; profit, one sister with bicycle

complete, wot offers?--cheap for tooth and 'air brush, vests,
night-shirt, stockings, and sundries.

"Make the best of it," and presently, when it came to
hair-brushing, he had to smooth his troubled locks with his

hands. It was a poor result. "Sneak out and get a shave, I
suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink again! Beard don't show

much."
He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself steadfastly for

some time, and curled his insufficient moustache up with some
care. Then he fell a-meditating on his beauty. He considered

himself, three-quarter face, left and right. An expression of
distaste crept over his features. "Looking won't alter it,

Hoopdriver," he remarked. "You're a weedy customer, my man.
Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow."

He put his knuckles on the toilet table and regarded himself with
his chin lifted in the air. "Good Lord!" he said. "WHAT a neck!

Wonder why I got such a thundering lump there."
He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass. "If I'd been

exercised properly, if I'd been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been
shoved out of a silly school into a silly shop--But there! the

old folks didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have.
But he didn't, poor old fool!--Still, when it comes to meeting a

girl like this--It's 'ARD.
"I wonder what Adam'd think of me--as a specimen. Civilisation,

eigh? Heir of the ages! I'm nothing. I know nothing. I can't do
anything--sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made an artist?

"Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in the sunshine."
"No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don't tell yourself any lies

about it. Lovers ain't your game,--anyway. But there's other
things yet. You can help the young lady, and you will--I suppose

she'll be going home--And that business of the bicycle's to see
to, too, my man. FORWARD, Hoopdriver! If you ain't a beauty,

that's no reason why you should stop and be copped, is it?"
And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind of

self-satisfaction, he had another attempt at his hair preparatory
to leaving his room and hurrying on breakfast, for an early