In another moment all three were hurrying up the steps. They
found Dangle, hatless, standing up with cut hands extended,

having his hands brushed by an officious small boy. A broad, ugly
road ran downhill in a long vista, and in the distance was a

little group of Botley inhabitants holding the big, black horse.
Even at that distance they could see the expression of conscious

pride on the monster's visage. It was as wooden-faced a horse as
you can imagine. The beasts in the Tower of London, on which the

men in armour are perched, are the only horses I have ever seen
at all like it. However, we are not concerned now with the horse,

but with Dangle. " Hurt?" asked Phipps, eagerly, leading.
"Mr. Dangle!" cried Mrs. Milton, clasping her hands.

"Hullo!" said Dangle, not surprised in the slightest. "Glad
you've come. I may want you. Bit of a mess I'm in--eigh? But I've

caught 'em. At the very place I expected, too."
"Caught them!" said Widgery. Where are they?"

"Up there," he said, with a backwardmotion of his head. "About a
mile up the hill. I left 'em. I HAD to."

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Milton, with that rapt, painful
look again. "Have you found Jessie?"

"I have. I wish I could wash the gravel out of my hands
somewhere. It was like this, you know. Came on them suddenly

round a corner. Horse shied at the bicycles. They were sitting by
the roadside botanising flowers. I just had time to shout,

'Jessie Milton, we've been looking for you,' and then that
confounded brute bolted. I didn't dare turn round. I had all my

work to do to save myself being turned over, as it was--so long
as I did, I mean. I just shouted, 'Return to your friends. All

will be forgiven.' And off I came, clatter, clatter. Whether they
heard--"

"TAKE ME TO HER," said Mrs. Milton, with intensity, turning
towards Widgery.

"Certainly," said Widgery, suddenly becoming active. "How far is
it, Dangle?"

"Mile and a half or two miles. I was determined to find them, you
know. I say though--Look at my hands! But I beg your pardon, Mrs.

Milton." He turned to Phipps. "Phipps, I say, where shall I wash
the gravel out? And have a look at my knee?"

"There's the station," said Phipps, becoming helpful. Dangle made
a step, and a damaged knee became evident. "Take my arm," said

Phipps.
"Where can we get a conveyance?" asked Widgery of two small boys.

The two small boys failed to understand. They looked at one
another.

"There's not a cab, not a go-cart, in sight," said Widgery. "It's
a case of a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse."

"There's a harse all right," said one of the small boys with a
movement of the head.

"Don't you know where we can hire traps? asked Widgery. "Or a
cart or-- anything?" asked Mrs. Milton.

"John Ooker's gart a cart, but no one can't 'ire'n," said the
larger of the small boys, partially averting his face and staring

down the road and making a song of it. "And so's my feyther,
for's leg us broke."

"Not a cart even! Evidently. What shall we do?"
It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgery was the man for

courtly devotion, Dangle was infinitely" target="_blank" title="ad.无限地；无穷地">infinitely readier of resource. "I
suppose--" she said, timidly. "Perhaps if you were to ask Mr.

Dangle--"
And then all the gilt came off Widgery. He answered quite rudely.

"Confound Dangle! Hasn't he messed us up enough? He must needs
drive after them in a trap to tell them we're coming, and now you

want me to ask him--"
Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with tears. He stopped

abruptly. "I'll go and ask Dangle," he said, shortly. "If you
wish it." And went striding into the station and down the steps,

leaving her in the road under the quiet inspection of the two
little boys, and with a kind of balladrefrainrunning through

her head, "Where are the Knights of the Olden Time?" and feeling
tired to death and hungry and dusty and out of curl, and, in

short, a martyr woman.
XXXI

It goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day, how the
fugitives vanished into Immensity; how there were no more trains

how Botley stared unsympathetically with a palpable disposition
to derision, denying conveyances how the landlord of the Heron

was suspicious, how the next day was Sunday, and the hot summer's
day had crumpled the collar of Phipps and stained the skirts of

Mrs. Milton, and dimmed the radiant emotions of the whole party.
Dangle, with sticking-plaster and a black eye, felt the absurdity

of the pose of the Wounded Knight, and abandoned it after the
faintest efforts. Recriminations never, perhaps, held the

foreground of the talk, but they played like summer lightning on
the edge of the conversation. And deep in the hearts of all was a

galling sense of the ridiculous. Jessie, they thought, was most
to blame. Apparently, too, the worst, which would have made the

whole business tragic, was not happening. Here was a young woman
--young woman do I say? a mere girl!--had chosen to leave a

comfortable home in Surbiton, and all the delights of a refined
and intellectualcircle, and had rushed off, trailing us after

her, posing hard, mutually jealous, and now tired and
weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere mud from her wheel,

into this detestable village beer-house on a Saturday night! And
she had done it, not for Love and Passion, which are serious

excuses one may recognise even if one must reprobate, but just
for a Freak, just for a fantastic Idea ; for nothing, in fact,

but the outraging of Common Sense. Yet withal, such was our
restraint, that we talked of her still as one much misguided, as

one who burthened us with anxiety, as a lamb astray, and Mrs.
Milton having eaten, continued to show the finest feelings on the

matter.
She sat, I may mention, in the cushioned basket-chair, the only

comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard,
horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs by

means of lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear
old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which

was open (the night was so tranquil and warm), and the dim light-
-for we did not use the lamp--suited her admirably. She talked in

a voice that told you she was tired, and she seemed inclined to
state a case against herself in the matter of "A Soul

Untrammelled." It was such an evening as might live in a
sympatheticmemoir, but it was a little dull while it lasted.

"I feel," she said, "that I am to blame. I have Developed. That
first book of mine--I do not go back upon a word of it, mind, but

it has been misunderstood, misapplied."
"It has," said Widgery, trying to look so deeply sympathetic as

to be visible in the dark. "Deliberately misunderstood."
"Don't say that," said the lady. "Not deliberately. I try and

think that critics are honest. After their lights. I was not
thinking of critics. But she--I mean--" She paused, an

interrogation.
"It is possible," said Dangle, scrutinising his sticking-plaster.

"I write a book and state a case. I want people to THINK as I
recommend, not to DO as I recommend. It is just Teaching. Only I

make it into a story. I want to Teach new Ideas, new Lessons, to
promulgate Ideas. Then when the Ideas have been spread

abroad--Things will come about. Only now it is madness to fly in
the face of the established order. Bernard Shaw, you know, has

explained that with regard to Socialism. We all know that to earn
all you consume is right, and that living on invested capital is