t.'

"I wish to goodness he had; I'd have given something to be out of that
cart. But he didn't have the chance. At that moment the pony gave a
sudden swerve; and I take it he must have been a bit too close. I heard
a yell and a curse, and at the same instant I was splashed from head to
foot with ditch water. Then the brute bolted. A man was coming along,
asleep on the top of a cart-load of windsor chairs. It's disgraceful the
way those wagoners go to sleep; I wonder there are not more accidents. I
don't think he ever knew what had happened to him. I couldn't look round
to see what became of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill
a policeman holla'd to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something
about furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a
girls' school walking two and two--a 'crocodile' they call it, I think.
I bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must have taken the
old woman a good hour to collect them together again.

"It was market-day in Chesham; and I guess there has not been a busier
market-day in Chesham before or since. We went through the town at about
thirty miles an hour. I've never seen Chesham so lively--it's a sleepy
hole as a rule. A mile outside the town I sighted the High Wycombe
coach. I didn't feel I minded much; I had got to that pass when it
didn't seem to matter to me what happened; I only felt curious. A dozen
yards off the coach the pony stopped dead; that jerked me off the seat
to the bottom of the cart. I couldn't get up, because the seat was on
top of me. I could see nothing but the sky, and occasionally the head
of the pony, when he stood upon his hind legs. But I could hear what the
driver of the coach said, and I judged he was having trouble also.

"'Take that damn circus out of the road,' he shouted. If he'd had
any sense he'd have seen how helpless I was. I could hear his cattle
plunging about; they are like that, horses--if they see one fool, then
they all want to be fools.

"'Take it home, and tie it up to its organ,' shouted the guard.

"Then an old woman went into hysterics, and began laughing like an
hyena. That started the pony off again, and, as far as I could calculate
by watching the clouds, we did about another four miles at the gallop.
Then he thought he'd try to jump a gate, and finding, I suppose, that
the cart hampered him, he started kicking it to pieces. I'd never have
thought a cart could have been separated into