er people, chairs were overturned, the Leas
policeman ran. How the matter settled itself I do not know--we were much
too anxious to disentangle ourselves from the affair and get out of range
of the eye of the old gentleman in the bath-chair to make minute
inquiries. As soon as we were sufficiently cool and sufficiently recovered
from our giddiness and nausea and confusion of mind to do so we stood up,
and skirting the crowd, directed our steps back along the road below the
Metropole towards Gibberne's house. But amidst the din I heard very
distinctly the gentleman who had been sitting beside the lady of the
ruptured sunshade using quite unjustifiable threats and language to one of
those chair-attendants who have "Inspector" written on their caps: "If you
didn't throw the dog," he said, "who _did_?"

The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our natural anxiety
about ourselves (our clothes were still dreadfully hot, and the fronts of
the thighs of Gibberne's white trousers were scorched a drabbish brown),
prevented the minute observations I should have liked to make on all these
things. Indeed, I really made no observations of any scientific value on
that return. The bee, of course, had gone. I looked for that cyclist, but
he was already out of sight as we came into the Upper Sandgate Road or
hidden from us by traffic; the _char-a-banc_, however, with its
people now all alive and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pace
almost abreast of the nearer church.

We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had stepped in getting
out of the house was slightly singed, and that the impressions of our feet
on the gravel of the path were unusually deep.

So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practically we
had been running about and saying and doing all sorts of things in the
space of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hour while the band
had played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect it had upon us was that the
whole world had stopped for our convenient inspection. Considering all
things, and particularly considering our rashness in venturing out of the
house, the experience might certainly have been much more disagreeable
than it was. It showed, no doubt, that Gibberne has still much to learn
before his preparation is a manageable convenience, but its practicability
it certainly demonstrated beyond all cavil.

Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use