ght. We left Poitiers in
mid-afternoon, gaily enough, but within five kilometres we had
stopped dead. The sparking of course; nothing else would diagnose the
case! It took three hours of almost constant cranking of the unruly
iron monster before the automobile could be made to start again.

Once started, the automobile ran but fitfully the seventy-five
kilometres to Niort, the whole party, with fear and trembling,
scarcely daring to turn sidewise to regard the landscape, or take an
extra breath. There was no assistance to be had this side of Niort,
and should the sparking arrangements go back on us again, and we were
not able to start, there was no hope of being towed in at the back of
a sturdy farm-horse; the distance was too great. Once we thought we
had nearly lost it again, but before we had actually lost our
momentum the thing recovered itself, and we ran fearingly down the
broad avenue into Niort, and asked anxiously as to whether there
might be a _grand maison des automobiles_ in the town.

Indeed there was, and in the twinkling of an eye we had shunted our
poor lame duck into the courtyard of a workshop which gave employment
to something like seventy-five hands, all engaged in the manufacture
of automobiles which were exported to the ends of the earth.

Here was help surely. Nothing could be too great or too small for an
establishment like this to undertake, and so we left the machine with
an easy heart and hunted out the excellent Hotel de France--the best
hotel of its class between Paris and Bordeaux. We dined sumptuously
on all the good things of the north and the south, to say nothing of
fresh sardines from La Rochelle, not far distant, and we gave not a
thought to the automobile again that night, but strolled on the quay
by the little river Sevre-Niortaise, and watched the moon rise over
the old chateau donjon, and heard the rooks caw, and saw them circle
and swing around its battlement in a final night-call before they
went to rest. It was all very idyllic and peaceful, although Niort
is, as may be inferred, an important centre for many things.

We had planned to be on the road again by eight the next morning,
but, on arrival at the garage, or more correctly stated, the _usine_,
where we had left the automobile the night before, we found it the
centre of a curious group who were speculating--and had been since
six o'clock that morning--as to what might be the particular new
variety of disease that had