swiftly on my trail.

I had no very clear purpose in my journey, but I steered east by the
sun, for I remembered from the map that if I went north I would come
into a region of coalpits and industrial towns. Presently I was down
from the moorlands and traversing the broad haugh of a river. For
miles I ran alongside a park wall, and in a break of the trees I saw a
great castle. I swung through little old thatched villages, and over
peaceful lowland streams, and past gardens blazing with hawthorn and
yellow laburnum. The land was so deep in peace that I could scarcely
believe that somewhere behind me were those who sought my life; ay, and
that in a month's time, unless I had the almightiest of luck, these
round country faces would be pinched and staring, and men would be
lying dead in English fields.

About mid-day I entered a long straggling village, and had a mind to
stop and eat. Half-way down was the Post Office, and on the steps of
it stood the postmistress and a policeman hard at work conning a
telegram. When they saw me they wakened up, and the policeman advanced
with raised hand, and cried on me to stop.

I nearly was fool enough to obey. Then it flashed upon me that the
wire had to do with me; that my friends at the inn had come to an
understanding, and were united in desiring to see more of me, and that
it had been easy enough for them to wire the description of me and the
car to thirty villages through which I might pass. I released the
brakes just in time. As it was, the policeman made a claw at the hood,
and only dropped off when he got my left in his eye.

I saw that main roads were no place for me, and turned into the byways.
It wasn't an easy job without a map, for there was the risk of getting
on to a farm road and ending in a duck-pond or a stable-yard, and I
couldn't afford that kind of delay. I began to see what an ass I had
been to steal the car. The big green brute would be the safest kind of
clue to me over the breadth of Scotland. If I left it and took to my
feet, it would be discovered in an hour or two and I would get no start
in the race.

The immediate thing to do was to get to the loneliest roads. These I
soon found when I struck up a tributary of the big river, and got into
a glen with steep hills all about me, and a corkscrew road at the end
which climbed over a pass. Here I met nobody, but it was taking me too
far north, so I slewed east along a bad track and finally stru