Harz--try it. You won't? Mother's milk! Fine night,
eh?" Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like the
glimmer of dew on grass.

These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in the
rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark space,
the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could enjoy in
common. The steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils enveloped them
with an odour as of glue.

"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"

Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of
Mr. Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like some
giant mushroom. Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose stones;
the carriage was swung sideways. The scared horses, straining asunder,
leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the darkness.

Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
vanished. With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and the
side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage dashed down,
sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows. The world seemed to
rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again. Only the stars
stood still.

Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little
out o'hand!"

Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly
in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted
his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short
shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over
and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr.
Treffry and Harz looked at each other.

XVII

Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh? You drive? No?
That's a pity! Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like it!"
Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not felt
before. Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my niece is
a slip of a thing, with all a young girl's notions! What have you got to
give her, eh? Yourself? That's surely not enough; mind this--six months
after marriage we all turn out much the same--a selfish lot! Not to
mention this anarchist affair!

"You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee, "I'm
fond of her, you see."

"If you were in my place," sa