," I admitted, "a roof has some advantages."

"Then," said she, "you've been here a long while, for there's been no
rain since I wakened up."

"But I didn't say I came here for shelter," I said hastily.

She stared at me again for a few moments.

"You're saying first one thing and then the other," she pronounced.

I felt inclined to tell her that she had missed her vocation. What a
terrible specimen of the brow-beating, cross-examining lawyer she would
have made! However, I decided that my safest line was cheerful
politeness.

"Have it your own way, my good dame!" I said lightly.

Her evil eyes transfixed me.

"You'll be a foreigner," she said.

"A foreigner!" I exclaimed; "why on earth should you think that?"

"You're using queer words," she replied.

"What words?" I demanded.

"Dame is the German for an old woman," said she.

This astonishing philological discovery might have amused me at another
time, but at this moment it only showed me too clearly how her thoughts
were running.

"Well," said I, "if it's German, I can only say it is the first word of
that beastly language I've ever spoken!"

Again I was answered by a very ominous silence. It occurred to me very
forcibly that the sooner I removed myself from this neighbourhood the
better.

"Well," I said, "my bicycle is mended now, so I had better be off."

"You had that," she agreed.

"Good-bye!" I cried as I led my cycle out, but she never spoke a
syllable in reply.

"Fate has not lost much time in forcing my hand!" I said to myself as I
pushed my motor-cycle along the track towards the highroad. I thought
it wiser not to look round, but just before I reached the road I
glanced over my left shoulder, and there was the old woman crossing the
fields at a much brisker pace than I should have given her credit for,
and heading straight for the nearest farm. My hand was being forced
with a vengeance.

Instinctively I should liked to have turned uphill and got clear of
this district immediately, but I was not sure how my cycle would behave
itself, and dared not risk a stiff ascent to begin with. So I set off
at top speed down the road I had come the night before, passing the old
crone at a little distance off, and noticing more than one labourer in
the fields or woman at a house door, staring with interest at this
early morning rider. When the news had spread of where he had come
from, and with what language he interlarded his speech, they