low walk.

A collision, therefore, was inevitable, and hardly had Teddy come to
this conclusion than smash, bang, it followed!

There was a terrible jolt, and he suddenly felt himself doing a
somersault, waking up the wagoner by tumbling on top of him above the
straw, whither he had hurled as from a catapult by the sudden stoppage
of the gig in its mad career; and when he came to himself he saw that
the fragments of the vehicle lay scattered about under the front of the
wagon, against which it had been violently impelled, the bay cantering
down to its own stable with its broken traces dangling behind it.

Teddy was thunderstruck at the mishap.

He had not thought there was any danger in disobeying the doctor's
instructions, and yet here was the gig smashed up and the wagoner's
horses injured irreparably, one poor brute having to be shot afterwards;
besides which he did not know what had become of the runaway animal.

All the mishap had arisen through disobedience!

He went home at once and told his father everything; but the vicar,
though comforting him by saying that he would get the doctor a new gig,
and recompense the farmer to whom the wagon belonged for the loss of his
team, seemed to have his eyes awakened at last to the evil to which
Doctor Jolly had so vainly tried to direct his attention.

He determined that Teddy should go to school.

But, before this intention could be carried out, there was a most
unexpected arrival at the vicarage.

This was no less a personage than Uncle Jack, whom neither Teddy nor his
sisters had ever seen before, he having gone to sea the same year the
vicar had married, and never been heard of again, the vessel in which he
had sailed having gone down, and all hands reported lost.

Uncle Jack hadn't foundered, though, if his ship had, for here he was as
large as life, and that was very large, he weighing some fourteen or
fifteen stone at the least!

What was more, he had passed through the most wonderful adventures and
been amongst savages. These experiences enabled him to recount the most
delightful and hairbreadth yarns--yarns that knocked all poor Jupp's
stories of the cut-and-dried cruises he had had in the navy into a
cocked hat, Teddy thought, as he hung on every utterance of this newly-
found uncle, longing the while to be a sailor and go through similar
experiences.

Uncle Jack took to him amazingly, too, and when he had become
domesticated at the vicarage, asked