wed and murderous, as he did when the
same thing occurred before, Nick smiled gleefully. He jumped down, and
without a word produced a machine exactly like the one his master
admired a few days ago.

"Where did you get that?" asked Sir Lionel.

"Last night, sahib," returned Nick, imperturbably. (He can speak quite
good English.)

"What! Since we had our trouble?"

"Yes, sahib." An odd expression now began to play among Nick's brown
features, like a breeze over a field of growing wheat.

"How's that? There's no shop."

"The sahib says true. I found this thing."

"Where?" sharply.

"But a little way from here. In the road."

"You rascal," exclaimed Sir Lionel. "You stole it."

Young Nick made Buddha eyebrows and a Buddha gesture. "The sahib knows
all. But if I did take it? Those men, they were going again to the big
city. We away. They never miss this. They buy another. It is better we
have it."

Trying to look very angry, though I knew he was dying to laugh, Sir
Lionel reproached Nick for breaking a solemn promise. "You swore you'd
never do such a thing in England if I brought you with me. Now you've
begun again, the same old game. I shall have to send you back, that is
all."

"Then I die, and _that_ is all," replied Young Nick, calmly.

The end of the story is, that Sir Lionel found out the names of the men,
who had spent the night at the Compton Arms, and had written their
address in the visitors' book. He sent the tool to them, with an
explanation which I should have loved to read. And it appears that,
though Nick is honest personally, he is a thief for the car, and in
Bengal took anything new and nice which other motors had and his hadn't.

Now, Mrs. Norton is afraid that, if Sir Lionel scolds him much, he will
commit hari-kari on the threshold of the hotel, which would be
embarrassing. And it does no good to tell her that hari-kari is a
Japanese or Chinese trick. She says, if Nick would not do that he might
do something worse.

Gliding over the perfect roads of the Forest, Apollo seemed actually to
float. I never felt anything so delicious, and so like being a goddess
reclining on a wind-blown cloud. No wonder motorists' faces, when you
can see them, almost always look madly happy. So different from "hay
motorists," as The Blot says. _They_ generally look grumpy.

The little wild ponies were one of the Forest's surprises for me. We met
lots of them, mostly miniature mothers giving their innocent