ck a big
double-line railway. Away below me I saw another broadish valley, and
it occurred to me that if I crossed it I might find some remote inn to
pass the night. The evening was now drawing in, and I was furiously
hungry, for I had eaten nothing since breakfast except a couple of buns
I had bought from a baker's cart. Just then I heard a noise in the
sky, and lo and behold there was that infernal aeroplane, flying low,
about a dozen miles to the south and rapidly coming towards me.

I had the sense to remember that on a bare moor I was at the
aeroplane's mercy, and that my only chance was to get to the leafy
cover of the valley. Down the hill I went like blue lightning,
screwing my head round, whenever I dared, to watch that damned flying
machine. Soon I was on a road between hedges, and dipping to the
deep-cut glen of a stream. Then came a bit of thick wood where I
slackened speed.

Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of another car, and realized to my
horror that I was almost up on a couple of gate-posts through which a
private road debouched on the highway. My horn gave an agonized roar,
but it was too late. I clapped on my brakes, but my impetus was too
great, and there before me a car was sliding athwart my course. In a
second there would have been the deuce of a wreck. I did the only
thing possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the right, trusting to
find something soft beyond.

But there I was mistaken. My car slithered through the hedge like
butter, and then gave a sickening plunge forward. I saw what was
coming, leapt on the seat and would have jumped out. But a branch of
hawthorn got me in the chest, lifted me up and held me, while a ton or
two of expensive metal slipped below me, bucked and pitched, and then
dropped with an almighty smash fifty feet to the bed of the stream.

Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided first on the hedge, and then
very gently on a bower of nettles. As I scrambled to my feet a hand
took me by the arm, and a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me
if I were hurt.

I found myself looking at a tall young man in goggles and a leather
ulster, who kept on blessing his soul and whinnying apologies. For
myself, once I got my wind back, I was rather glad than otherwise.
This was one way of getting rid of the car.

'My blame, Sir,' I answered him. 'It's lucky that I did not add
homicide to my follies. That's the end of my Scotch motor tour, but it
might