nly
light as yet.

A hill seems endless in the dark, for you cannot see the end, and with
the patter of bare feet gaining on us, I thought this one could have no
end at all. Of course the boys could charge up it quicker than we
could pedal, but I even heard the voice of their stout instructor
growing louder through the mist.

"Oh, to think I've let you in for this!" I groaned, my head over the
handle-bars, every ounce of my weight first on one foot and then on the
other. I glanced at Raffles, and in the white light of his torch he
was doing it all with his ankles, exactly as though he had been riding
in a Gymkhana.

"It's the most sporting chase I was ever in," said he.

"All my fault!"

"My dear Bunny, I wouldn't have missed it for the world!"

Nor would he forge ahead of me, though he could have done so in a
moment, he who from his boyhood had done everything of the kind so
much better than anybody else. No, he must ride a wheel's length
behind me, and now we could not only hear the boys running, but
breathing also. And then of a sudden I saw Raffles on my right
striking with his torch; a face flew out of the darkness to meet the
thick glass bulb with the glowing wire enclosed; it was the face of the
boy Olphert, with his enviable moustache, but it vanished with the
crash of glass, and the naked wire thickened to the eye like a
tuning-fork struck red-hot.

I saw no more of that. One of them had crept up on my side also; as I
looked, hearing him pant, he was grabbing at my left handle, and I
nearly sent Raffles into the hedge by the sharp turn I took to the
right. His wheel's length saved him. But my boy could run, was
overhauling me again, seemed certain of me this time, when all at once
the Sunbeam ran easily; every ounce of my weight with either foot once
more, and I was over the crest of the hill, the gray road reeling out
from under me as I felt for my brake. I looked back at Raffles. He had
put up his feet. I screwed my head round still further, and there were
the boys in their pyjamas, their hands upon their knees, like so many
wicket-keepers, and a big man shaking his fist. There was a lamp-post
on the hill-top, and that was the last I saw.

We sailed down to the river, then on through Thames Ditton as far as
Esher Station, when we turned sharp to the right, and from the dark
stretch by Imber Court came to light in Molesey, and were soon
pedalling like gentlemen of leisure through Bus