ly touched her, but you never know where you are with any
horse. That mare, which had been a mirror of all the virtues all the
afternoon, was off like a rocket. She overtook an electric car as if it
had been standing still. Ellis sawed her mouth; he might as well have
sawed the funnel of a locomotive. He had meant to turn off and traverse
Bursley by secluded streets, but he perceived that safety lay solely in
letting her go straight ahead up the very steep slope of Oldcastle
Street into the middle of the town. It would be an amazing mare that
galloped to the top of Oldcastle Street! She galloped nearly to the top,
and then Ellis began to get hold of her a bit.

'Don't be afraid,' he said masculinely to Ada.

And, conscious of victory, he jerked the mare to the left to avoid an
approaching car....

The next instant they were anchored against the roots of a lamp-post.
When Ellis saw the upper half of the lamp-post bent down at right
angles, and pieces of glass covering the pavement, he could not believe
that he and his dogcart had done that, especially as neither the mare,
nor the dogcart, nor its freight, was damaged. The machine was merely
jammed, and the mare, satisfied, stood quiet, breathing rapidly.

But Ada Jenkins was crying.

And the car stopped a moment to observe. And then a number of
chapel-goers on their way to the Sytch Chapel, which the Carter family
still faithfully attended, joined the scene; and then a policeman.

Ellis sat like a stuck pig in the dogcart. He knew that speech was
demanded of him, but he did not know where to begin.

The worst thing of all was the lamp-post, bent, moveless, unnatural,
atrociously comic, accusing him.

The affair was over the town in a minute; the next morning it reached
Llandudno. Ellis Carter had been out on the spree with _a Wakes girl_ in
a dogcart on Sunday afternoon, and had got into such a condition that he
had driven into a lamp-post at the top of Oldcastle Street just as
people were going into chapel.

The lamp-post remained bent for three days--a fearful warning to all
dogs that doggishness has limits.

If it had not been a dogcart, and such a high, green dogcart; if it had
been, say, a brougham, or even a cab! If it had not been Sunday! And,
granting Sunday, if it had not been just as people were going into
chapel! If he had not chosen that particular lamp-post, visible both
from the market-place and St. Luke's Square! If he had only contrived to
des