d grew
fewer and at last ceased. A more solid blackness was the only inkling
of dwellings on either hand. Once the low, vibrating hum of the car
seemed to bring a light to a high window, but it fell back into the
dark before he had caught more than a faint glimmer on the blind.

He met nothing: the road for all he knew was utterly empty of life. In
the silent, motionless darkness it was like a path into illimitable
space. He knew every mile of it, yet in the night the miles stretched
out and raced with him.

It was far from village or town when at last Christopher wrenched his
mind from the mechanical power that held it prisoner, and realised
that town or no town, bed or no bed, he must stop. He brought the car
to a standstill under the lea of a low ridge of downs, at a point
where an old chalk pit reared its white face, glimmering faintly in
the darkness. He hazarded a fair guess as to his whereabouts.
Whitmansworth must be fifteen or twenty miles ahead. It was nearly
midnight now. He would get no lodging even if he went on. He backed
the car off the road into the circle of the chalk pit, made as
comfortable a resting place as he could with rugs and cushions between
the motor and the white wall, and extinguished the lamps. The cool,
still night had him to herself, and cradled him to sleep as a mother
her child, under the folds of her dark mantle.

He woke when the first fingers of dawn busied themselves with the hem
of that dusky cloak, and sound as faint and tremulous as the light
itself whispered across the earth. He watched a while to see the dim
shapes reform under the glowing light, and the clouds that still
curtained the sky, take on themselves a sombre grey uniform. But
directly the line of white road took distinctness Christopher struck
camp, and boldly raced to meet the full day. An early shepherd paused
to watch him pass, returning impassively to work as he disappeared.
Two or three labouring men also stared; one even commented to a fellow
worker that "these yere motors take no more heed o' decent hours than
o' natural distances. Five in the mornin' weren't part o' the gentry's
day when I were a boy," he grumbled, "and five miles were five miles,
no more nor less. 'Tisn't more nor a mile now."

At wayside farms life was in full swing. Dumbly impatient cows
listened for the clatter of milk-pails, and solemn cart horses trudged
to the upland fields. Presently he passed through a town where his own
Patrimon