sbury. From Winchester, roads branch in
every direction, and to turn abruptly westward was clearly the way to
throw off the chase. As Hoopdriver saw the moon rising broad and yellow
through the twilight, he thought he should revive the effect of that
ride out of Bognor; but somehow, albeit the moon and all the atmospheric
effects were the same, the emotions were different. They rode in
absolute silence, and slowly after they had cleared the outskirts of
Winchester. Both of them were now nearly tired out,--the level was
tedious, and even a little hill a burden; and so it came about that
in the hamlet of Wallenstock they were beguiled to stop and ask for
accommodation in an exceptionally prosperous-looking village inn. A
plausible landlady rose to the occasion.

Now, as they passed into the room where their suppers were prepared, Mr.
Hoopdriver caught a glimpse through a door ajar and floating in a reek
of smoke, of three and a half faces--for the edge of the door cut one
down--and an American cloth-covered table with several glasses and a
tankard. And he also heard a remark. In the second before he heard that
remark, Mr. Hoopdriver had been a proud and happy man, to particularize,
a baronet's heir incognito. He had surrendered their bicycles to the odd
man of the place with infinite easy dignity, and had bowingly opened
the door for Jessie. "Who's that, then?" he imagined people saying;
and then, "Some'n pretty well orf--judge by the bicycles." Then the
imaginary spectators would fall a-talking of the fashionableness of
bicycling,--how judges And stockbrokers and actresses and, in fact, all
the best people rode, and how that it was often the fancy of such great
folk to shun the big hotels, the adulation of urban crowds, and seek,
incognito, the cosy quaintnesses of village life. Then, maybe, they
would think of a certain nameless air of distinction about the lady
who had stepped across the doorway, and about the handsome,
flaxen-moustached, blue-eyed Cavalier who had followed her in, and they
would look one to another. "Tell you what it is," one of the village
elders would say--just as they do in novels--voicing the thought of all,
in a low, impressive tone: "There's such a thin' as entertaining barranets
unawares--not to mention no higher things--"

Such, I say, had been the filmy, delightful stuff in Mr. Hoopdriver's
head the moment before he heard that remark. But the remark toppled
him headlong. What the precise rem