e bruise on the shin is even more characteristic of
the 'prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them waits the jest of the
unexpected treadle. You try at least to walk your machine in an easy
manner, and whack!--you are rubbing your shin. So out of innocence we
ripen. Two bruises on that place mark a certain want of aptitude in
learning, such as one might expect in a person unused to muscular
exercise. Blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch
of the wavering rider. And so forth, until Sherlock is presently
explaining, by the help of the minor injuries, that the machine ridden
is an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the diamond frame, a
cushioned tire, well worn on the hind wheel, and a gross weight all on
of perhaps three-and-forty pounds.

The revelation is made. Behind the decorous figure of the attentive
shopman that I had the honour of showing you at first, rises a vision
of a nightly struggle, of two dark figures and a machine in a dark
road,--the road, to be explicit, from Roehampton to Putney Hill,--and
with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping
and grunting, a shouting of "Steer, man, steer!" a wavering unsteady
flight, a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine,
and a collapse. Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central
figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at
some new place, and his friend, sympathetic (but by no means depressed),
repairing the displacement of the handle-bar.

Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself,
and drive him against all the conditions of his calling, against the
counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek the
wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain. And our first
examination of the draper reveals beneath his draperies--the man! To
which initial fact (among others) we shall come again in the end.

II

But enough of these revelations. The central figure of our story is now
going along behind the counter, a draper indeed, with your purchases in
his arms, to the warehouse, where the various articles you have selected
will presently be packed by the senior porter and sent to you. Returning
thence to his particular place, he lays hands on a folded piece of
gingham, and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands, begins to
straighten them punctiliously. Near him is an apprentice, apprenticed to
the same high call