--and vanished round the corner.

"He knew my name," said Jessie. "Yes--it was Mr. Dangle."
"That was our bicycles did that," said Mr. Hoopdriver

simultaneously, and speaking with a certain complacent concern.
"I hope he won't get hurt."

"That was Mr. Dangle," repeated Jessie, and Mr. Hoopdriver heard
this time, with a violent start. His eyebrows went up

spasmodically.
"What! someone you know?"

"Yes."
"Lord!"

"He was looking for me," said Jessie. "I could see. He began to
call to me before the horse shied. My stepmother has sent him."

Mr. Hoopdriver wished he had returned the bicycle after all, for
his ideas were still a little hazy about Bechamel and Mrs.

Milton. Honesty IS the best policy--often, he thought. He turned
his head this way and that. He became active. "After us, eigh?

Then he'll come back. He's gone down that hill, and he won't be
able to pull up for a bit, I'm certain."

Jessie, he saw, had wheeled her machine into the road and was
mounting. Still staring at the corner that had swallowed up

Dangle, Hoopdriver followed suit. And so, just as the sun was
setting, they began another flight together,--riding now towards

Bishops Waltham, with Mr. Hoopdriver in the post of danger--the
rear--ever and again looking over his shoulder and swerving

dangerously as he did so. Occasionally Jessie had to slacken her
pace. He breathed heavily, and hated himself because his mouth

fell open, After nearly an hour's hard riding, they found
themselves uncaught at Winchester. Not a trace of Dangle nor any

other danger was visible as they rode into the dusky, yellow-lit
street. Though the bats had been fluttering behind thehedges and

the evening star was bright while they were still two miles from
Winchester, Mr. Hoopdriver pointed out the dangers of stopping in

such an obvious abiding-place, and gently but firmly insisted
upon replenishing the lamps and riding on towards Salisbury. From

Winchester, roads branch in every direction, and to turn abruptly
westward was clearly the way to throw off the chase. As

Hoopdriver saw the moon rising broad and yellow through the
twilight, he thought he should revive the effect of that ride out

of Bognor; but somehow, albeit the moon and all the atmospheric
effects were the same, the emotions were different. They rode in

absolute silence, and slowly after they had cleared the outskirts
of Winchester. Both of them were now nearly tired out,--the level

was tedious, and even a little hill a burden; and so it came
about that in the hamlet of Wallenstock they were beguiled to

stop and ask for accommodation in an exceptionally
prosperouslooking village inn. A plausible landlady rose to the

occasion.
Now, as they passed into the room where their suppers were

prepared, Mr. Hoopdriver caught a glimpse through a door ajar and
floating in a reek of smoke, of three and a half faces-- for the

edge of the door cut one down--and an American cloth-covered
table with several glasses and a tankard. And he also heard a

remark. In the second before he heard that remark, Mr. Hoopdriver
had been a proud and happy man, to particularize, a baronet's

heir incognito. He had surrendered their bicycles to the odd man
of the place with infinite easy dignity, and had bowingly opened

the door for Jessie. "Who's that, then?" he imagined people
saying; and then, "Some'n pretty well orf--judge by the

bicycles." Then the imaginary spectators would fall a-talking of
the fashionableness of bicycling,--how judges And stockbrokers

and actresses and, in fact, all the best people rode, and how
that it was often the fancy of such great folk to shun the big

hotels, the adulation of urban crowds, and seek, incognito, the
cosy quaintnesses of village life. Then, maybe, they would think

of a certain nameless air of distinction about the lady who had
stepped across the doorway, and about the handsome,

flaxen-moustached, blue-eyed Cavalier who had followed her in,
and they would look one to another. "Tell you what it is," one of

the village elders would say--just as they do in novels--voicing
the thought of all, in a low, impressive tone: "There's such a

thinas entertaining barranets unawares-not to mention no higher
things--"

Such, I say, had been the filmy, delightful stuff in Mr.
Hoopdriver's head the moment before he heard that remark. But the

remark toppled him headlong. What the precise remark was need not
concern us. It was a casual piece of such satire as Strephon

delights in. Should you be curious, dear lady, as to its nature,
you have merely to dress yourself in a really modern cycling

costume, get one of the feeblest-looking of your men to escort
you, and ride out, next Saturday evening, to any public house

where healthy, homely people gather together. Then you will hear
quite a lot of the kind of thing Mr. Hoopdriver heard. More,

possibly, than you will desire.
The remark, I must add, implicated Mr. Hoopdriver. It indicated

an entire disbelief in his social standing. At a blow, it
shattered all the gorgeousimaginativefabric his mind had been

rejoicing in. All that foolish happiness vanished like a dream.
And there was nothing to show for it, as there is nothing to show

for any spiteful remark that has ever been made. Perhaps the man
who said the thing had a gleam of satisfaction at the idea of

taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg, but it is just as
possible he did not know at the time that his stray shot had hit.

He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it not
only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. It

touched Jessie grossly.
She did not hear it, he concluded from her subsequent bearing;

but during the supper they had in the little private dining-room,
though she talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of

indistinct conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from
the inn parloiir through the pelargoniums in the open window.

Hoopdriver felt it must all be in the same strain,--at her
expense and his. He answered her abstractedly. She was tired, she

said, and presently went to her room. Mr. Hoopdriver, in his
courtly way, opened the door for her and bowed her out. He stood

listening and fearing some new offence as she went upstairs, and
round the bend where the barometer hung beneath the stuffed

birds. Then he went back to the room, and stood on the hearthrug
before the. paper fireplaceornament. "Cads!" he said in a

scathing undertone, as a fresh burst of laughter came floating
in. All through supper he had been composing stinging repartee, a

blistering speech of denunciation to be presently delivered. He
would rate them as a nobleman should: "Call themselves

Englishmen, indeed, and insult a woman!" he would say; take the
names and addresses perhaps, threaten to speak to the Lord of the

Manor, promise to let them hear from him again, and so out with
consternation in his wake. It really ought to be done.

"Teach 'em better," he said fiercely" target="_blank" title="ad.凶猛地，残忍地">fiercely, and tweaked his moustache
painfully. What was it? He revived the objectionable remark for

his own exasperation, and then went over the heads of his speech
again.

He coughed, made three steps towards the door, then stopped and
went back to the hearthrug. He wouldn't--after all. Yet was he

not a Knight Errant? Should such men go unreproved, unchecked, by
wandering baronets incognito? Magnanimity? Look at it in that

way? Churls beneath one's notice? No; merely a cowardly
subterfuge. He WOULD after all.

Something within him protested that he was a hot-headed ass even
as he went towards the door again. But he only went on the more