t was knocked away, and the entire load that the
van was carrying was pitched over and fell a little way into the pool. In
a couple of minutes the giant trout was flapping and twisting on bare mud
at the bottom of a waterless pool, and my uncle was able to walk down to
him and fold him to his breast. The van-load consisted of
blotting-paper, and every drop of water in that pool had been sucked up
into the mass of spilt cargo."

There was silence for nearly half a minute in the smoking-room, and
Treddleford began to let his mind steal back towards the golden road that
led to Samarkand. Amblecope, however, rallied, and remarked in a rather
tired and dispirited voice:

"Talking of motor accidents, the narrowest squeak I ever had was the
other day, motoring with old Tommy Yarby in North Wales. Awfully good
sort, old Yarby, thorough good sportsman, and the best--"

"It was in North Wales," said Treddleford, "that my sister met with her
sensational carriage accident last year. She was on her way to a garden-
party at Lady Nineveh's, about the only garden-party that ever comes to
pass in those parts in the course of the year, and therefore a thing that
she would have been very sorry to miss. She was driving a young horse
that she'd only bought a week or two previously, warranted to be
perfectly steady with motor traffic, bicycles, and other common objects
of the roadside. The animal lived up to its reputation, and passed the
most explosive of motor-bikes with an indifference that almost amounted
to apathy. However, I suppose we all draw the line somewhere, and this
particular cob drew it at travelling wild beast shows. Of course my
sister didn't know that, but she knew it very distinctly when she turned
a sharp corner and found herself in a mixed company of camels, piebald
horses, and canary-coloured vans. The dogcart was overturned in a ditch
and kicked to splinters, and the cob went home across country. Neither
my sister nor the groom was hurt, but the problem of how to get to the
Nineveh garden-party, some three miles distant, seemed rather difficult
to solve; once there, of course, my sister would easily find some one to
drive her home. 'I suppose you wouldn't care for the loan of a couple of
my camels?' the showman suggested, in humorous sympathy. 'I would,' said
my sister, who had ridden camel-back in Egypt, and she overruled the
objections of the groom, who hadn't. She picked out two of the most
presenta