s
thirst, even more than thirst begets drinking, until at last the man who
yields becomes a hell unto himself, a hell in which the fire dieth
not, and the thirst is not quenched.) Until a pennyworth of acrid green
apples turned the current that threatened to carry him away. Ever and
again a cycle, or a party of cyclists, would go by, with glittering
wheels and softly running chains, and on each occasion, to save his
self-respect, Mr. Hoopdriver descended and feigned some trouble with his
saddle. Each time he descended with less trepidation.

He did not reach Guildford until nearly four o'clock, and then he was
so much exhausted that he decided to put up there for the night, at
the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern. And after he had cooled a space and
refreshed himself with tea and bread and butter and jam,--the tea he
drank noisily out of the saucer,--he went out to loiter away the rest of
the afternoon. Guildford is an altogether charming old town, famous,
so he learnt from a Guide Book, as the scene of Master Tupper's great
historical novel of Stephen Langton, and it has a delightful castle, all
set about with geraniums and brass plates commemorating the gentlemen
who put them up, and its Guildhall is a Tudor building, very pleasant to
see, and in the afternoon the shops are busy and the people going to and
fro make the pavements look bright and prosperous. It was nice to peep
in the windows and see the heads of the men and girls in the drapers'
shops, busy as busy, serving away. The High Street runs down at an angle
of seventy degrees to the horizon (so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver, whose
feeling for gradients was unnaturally exalted), and it brought his heart
into his mouth to see a cyclist ride down it, like a fly crawling down a
window pane. The man hadn't even a brake. He visited the castle early in
the evening and paid his twopence to ascend the Keep.

At the top, from the cage, he looked down over the clustering red roofs
of the town and the tower of the church, and then going to the southern
side sat down and lit a Red Herring cigarette, and stared away south
over the old bramble-bearing, fern-beset ruin, at the waves of blue
upland that rose, one behind another, across the Weald, to the lazy
altitudes of Hindhead and Butser. His pale grey eyes were full of
complacency and pleasurable anticipation. Tomorrow he would go riding
across that wide valley.

He did not notice any one else had come up the Keep after him un