BOOK TWO ONE OF THE JOLLY ONES

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CHAPTER I
INTENTIONS, BEFORE HAVING HIS HAIR CUT, OF A WAGONER

In this company, and with this highly appropriate beginning of legs dangling carelessly above the dusty highroad from a stolen seat on the tail-board of a wagon, there began to befall Mr. Wriford many adventures which, peculiar and unusual for any man, were, for one of Mr. Wriford's station in life and of his character and antecedents, in the highest degree extraordinary. His dangling legs—and the fact that he swung them as they dangled—were, indeed, emblematic of the frame of mind which took him into these adventures and which—save when the old torments clutched him and held him—carried him through each and very irresponsibly into the next. Through all the later years of his former life he had very much cared what happened to him and what people thought of him when they looked at him. He was filled now with a spirit of not caring at all. It was more than a reckless spirit; it was a conscious spirit. He had often, in the days of his torment, cried aloud that he wished he might die. He told himself now that he did not mind if he did die, and did not mind if he was hurt or what suffering befell him. Through all the later years of his former life he often had cried aloud, his brain most dreadfully surging, his panic desire to get out of it all. He told himself that he now was out of it all. He had been frantic to be free; he now was free. A very giddiness of freedom possessed him and caused him, at the dizziness of it, to laugh aloud. A very intoxication of irresponsibility filled him and caused in him a fierce lust to exercise it in feats of maddest folly. He only wanted to laugh, as before he very often had wanted to cry or scream. He only wanted to perform wild, senseless pranks, as before he only had desired to be shut away from people—by himself, alone, in the dark. All this increased with every day of the early days in Mr. Puddlebox's company. Now, as he sat beside Mr. Puddlebox on the tail-board of the wagon, and swung his legs and often laughed aloud, he sometimes reflected upon where the wagon was taking them and what would happen, and at the thought that he did not care whither or what, laughed again; and more than once looked at Mr. Puddlebox, blowing and puffing in exhaustion beside him, and scarcely could control an impulse to push him off the tail-board and laugh to see him clutch and expostulate and fall; and once struck his fist against the revolving wheel beside him and laughed aloud to feel the pain and to see his bruised and dusty knuckles.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, catching the gleaming eyes that were turned upon him in mischievous thought to push him off, "Loony, you're getting unspooked already."

"It's very jolly," said Mr. Wriford, and laughed. "I like this."

"You shall learn to like everything," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and so to be jolly always."

"How do you live?" inquired Mr. Wriford.

"Why," said Mr. Puddlebox, "by liking everything, for that is the only way to live. Sun, snow; rain, storm; heat, cold; hunger, fullness; fatigue, rest; pain, pleasure; I take all as they come and welcome each by turn or all together. They come from the Lord, boy, and that is how I take them, love them, and return them to the Lord again in form of praise. Selah."

"Dash it," said Mr. Wriford, "you might be a Salvationist, you know."

"Curse me," returned Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully, "I am nothing of the sort. Would that I were. I will tell you what I am, boy. I am the most miserable sinner that any man could be, and I am the most miserable in this—that I know where mercy comes from, which most poor sinners do not and therefore am less miserable than I. I have outraged my parents, and I outrage heaven in every breath I draw, particularly when, as, curse me, too often it is, my breath is whisky-ladened: which thing is abominable to the nose of godliness and very comfortable to my own. I know where mercy comes, loony, on the one hand because I was trained for the ministry, and on the other because I see it daily with my eyes. I know where mercy comes, yet I never can encompass it, for my flesh is ghastly weak and ghastly vile and, curse me, I have worn it thus so long that I prefer it so. But if I cannot encompass mercy, boy, I can return thanks for it; and if it comes in form of scourge—cold, hunger, pain, they are the three that fright me most—why, I deserve it the more surely and return it in praise the more lustily. That is how I live."

Many days hence it was to befall Mr. Wriford—in very bitter lesson, in hour of deepest anguish—to know a certain beauty in this odd testament of faith.

Just now, of his dizzy mood and of the teller's merry eye as he told it, little more than its whimsicality touched him; and when it was done, "Well, but that doesn't feed you," he said. "In that way—feeding and clothing and the rest of it—how do you live in that way?"

"Why, much in the same," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "Taking what comes, and if need be, which it is my constant prayer it need not, turning my hand to work, of which there is plenty. There is bread and raiment in every house, some for asking, some for working, and always some to get rid of me when I begin to work. What there is not in every house, boy, is whisky, and it is for that my brow has to sweat when, as now, my bottle is empty. But there are," continued Mr. Puddlebox, beginning to wriggle in his seat and draw up his legs with the evident intention of standing upon them, "there are, happily, or, curse me, unhappily, other ways of getting whisky; and the first is never to lose an opportunity of looking for it."

Mr. Puddlebox's feet were now upon the tail-board and he was clutching at the sacks, in great exertion to stand upright.

"What now?" inquired Mr. Wriford, beginning to laugh again.

"Why, to look for it," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In every new and likely place I always look for whisky. If none, I sing very heartily 'O ye disappointments' and am the better both for the praise and for the fact there is none. If some, I am both grateful and, curse me, happy. The top of these sacks is a new place, my loony, and a very likely. Our kind coachman, as I observed, wore no coat and had no bundle, nor were these beside him. They are likely on top."

"I'll come with you," said Mr. Wriford. "It's a devil of a climb."

"It's a devil of a prize," responded Mr. Puddlebox, "if it's there."

It proved to be both the one and the other. The sacks, stacked in ridges, provided steps of a sort, but each was of prodigious height, of very brief foothold, and the sacks so tightly stuffed as to afford but a scraping, digging hold for the fingers. When to these difficulties was added the swaying of the whole as the wagon jolted along, there was caused on the part of the climbers much panic clutching at each other, at the ropes which bound the sacks, and at the sacks themselves, together with much blowing and sounds of fear from Mr. Puddlebox, vastly incommoded by his bulging coattails, and much hysterical mirth from Mr. Wriford, incommoded no little by laughter at the absurdity of the escapade and at imagination of the grotesque spectacle they must present as they swarmed.

He was first to reach the summit. "By Jove, there's a coat here, anyway!" he cried.

Mr. Puddlebox bulged up and plunged forward on his face with a last convulsive scramble. "And, by my sins, a bottle!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, drawing the coat aside. "Beer, I fear me—a filling and unsatisfactory drink." He drew the cork and applied his nose. "Whisky!" and applied his mouth.

"Good Lord!" cried Mr. Wriford, astonished at a thought that came to him with the length of Mr. Puddlebox's drink. "Man alive! Do you drink it neat?"

"Hup! Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I do. It takes less room. Hup! This is the most infernal torment, this hupping. I must, but I never can, drink more, hup! slowly. As a rule," continued Mr. Puddlebox, balancing on his knees and fumbling in his coattail pockets, "as a rule I never rob a man of his bottle. If a man has a bottle, he has an encouragement towards thrift and sobriety. It is a persuasion to put his whisky there instead of at one draught into his mouth. For the moment I must suspend the by-law. I cannot decant this gentleman's whisky into my own bottle, for our carriage shakes and would cause loss. And I cannot exchange for this bottle my own, for to mine I am deeply attached. Therefore—" Mr. Puddlebox fumbled the bottle into his pocket, appeared to find some difficulty in accommodating it, produced it again and took another drink from it and, as if this had indeed diminished its bulk, this time slid it home, where Mr. Wriford heard it clink a greeting with its empty fellow. "Therefore," said Mr. Puddlebox—"hup!"

"Well, mind they don't break," said Mr. Wriford. "Let's have a look where we're getting to," and he squirmed himself on elbows and knees towards the front of the sacks and stretched out, face downwards.

"I never yet," said Mr. Puddlebox proudly, "committed the crime of breaking a bottle." From his knees he took an observation down the road ahead of him, announced: "We are getting towards the pretty hamlet of Ditchenhanger," and coming forward lay full length by Mr. Wriford's side.

This position brought their heads, overhanging the sacks, immediately above the wagoner seated a long arm's length below them, his horses walking, the reins slack in his hands and himself, to all appearances, in something of a doze. A very large man, as Mr. Wriford had previously noticed, with prodigious arms, bare to the elbow; and at his unconsciousness of their presence, hanging immediately above him, and at his sullen face and the rage upon it if he knew, Mr. Wriford was moved to silent squirms of laughter, and turned a laughing face to Mr. Puddlebox's, suspended over the sacks beside him.

"Hup!" said Mr. Puddlebox with shattering violence.

The wagoner started not less violently, looked about him with jerking, savage head, while Mr. Wriford held his breath and dared not move, uttered an oath of extraordinarily unsavoury character, grabbed at his whip, and lashed with all the force of his arm at his horses.

The nature of their response exercised a very obvious result upon the wagon. It suffered a jerk that caused from Mr. Wriford a frantic clutch at the sacks and from Mr. Puddlebox a double explosion that cost him (as he afterwards narrated) very considerable pain.

"Huppup!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hup!" and with this his pudding-bowl hat detached itself from his head and dropped lightly into the wagoner's lap. That gentleman immediately produced another oath, compared with which his earlier effort was as a sweet smelling rose at dewy morn, drew up his unfortunate team even more violently than he had urged them forward, with very loud bellows bounded to the road and, whip in hand, completed a very rapid circuit of his wagon, bawling the while a catalogue of astoundingly blood-curdling intentions which he proposed to wreak upon somebody before, as he phrased it, he had his blinking hair cut.

His passengers, considerably alarmed at these proceedings, withdrew to the exact centre of the sacks and there reflected, each in the other's face, his own dismay.

"Now you've done it, you silly ass," said Mr. Wriford.

"It's not over yet," said Mr. Puddlebox. "I'm afraid this is going to be very rough."

CHAPTER II
PASSIONATE ATTACHMENT TO LIVER OF A WAGONER

"You're up there, ain't yer?" demanded the wagoner, arrived at the other side of the wagon and bawling from the road. "You're up there, aren't yer? I've got you, my beauty! I'll cut your liver out for yer before I have my blinkin' hair cut! I've got you, my beauty! You're up there, aren't yer?"

Mr. Puddlebox poked his head very timidly over the side, looked down upon their questioner, and remarked in a small thin voice: "Yes—hup!" He then drew back very hastily, for at sight of him the wagoner with a very loud bellow rushed forward and smote upward with his whip in a manner fully calculated, to the minds of his passengers, to cut up a sack or lay open a liver with equal precision. "Come down off out of it!" bellowed this passionate gentleman, flogging upward with appalling whistle and thud of his lash. "Come down off out of it. I'll cut your liver out, my beauty! I'll cut your coat off your back, before I have my blinkin' hair cut."

Perceiving that the angry lash fell safely short of its aim, Mr. Puddlebox again protruded his head.

"Now are you coming down," demanded the flaming wagoner, "or am I coming up for you?"

"I should like to explain—" began Mr. Puddlebox.

"I'll explain you!" roared the wagoner. "I'll explain you, my beauty! Are you coming down off out of it?"

"What are you going to do if I do come?" inquired Mr. Puddlebox.

The carter, in a voice whose violence seemed likely to throttle him, announced as his intention that he proposed to cut out Mr. Puddlebox's liver with his whip and then, having extracted it, to dance upon it.

"Well, I won't come," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In that case, I think I'll stay here," he said, and said it with a nervous little giggle that shot out of the wagoner an inarticulate bellow of fury and a half-dozen of terrific blows towards Mr. Puddlebox's anxious face.

"Come down off out of it!" bellowed the carter. "I'll cut your liver out before I have my blinkin' hair cut, my beauty."

The same nervous giggle again escaped the unfortunate beauty whose liver was thus passionately demanded. "But your hair doesn't want cutting," said Mr. Puddlebox, "really—hup!"

"You fool!" Mr. Wriford cried. "You utter fool!" and in dramatic illustration of Mr. Puddlebox's folly, the wagon began to shake with the violence of the wagoner's ascent of it, and there preceded the ascent, increasing in horror as it approached, an eruption of astoundingly distressing oaths mingled in the most blood-curdling way with references to liver and other organs which were to be subjected at one and the same time to step-dances and to a ferocious orgy of surgical and cannibalistic practices.

Mr. Wriford was frightened. There went out of him the reckless glee in mad adventure that had possessed him on the wagon till now. There returned to him, dreadfully as if a hand within him were tugging at his vitals, twirling in his brain, drumming in his heart, the coward fear that well of old he knew.

"Down!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Down behind, loony! quick!" and began to scramble backwards.

There came to Mr. Wriford some odd experiences. He looked at Mr. Puddlebox and saw in the little round face where usually was merriment, alarm, white and sickly. Then saw Mr. Puddlebox's eyes search his own, and waver, and then fill with some purpose. Then was pulled and pushed backward by Mr. Puddlebox. Then both were hanging, half over the sacks, half on top. Then over the front of the wagon before them appeared the wagoner's cap and a vast arm clutching the whip. Then Mr. Puddlebox scrambled forward a yard, placing himself between Mr. Wriford and the approaching fury. "Down you go, loony; he's not seen you. Hide yourself, boy." Then Mr. Puddlebox's elbow and then his knee at Mr. Wriford's chest, and Mr. Wriford was slithered down the sacks and fallen in the road.

Now from above, and before yet Mr. Wriford could get to his feet, very quick things. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner standing on his driver's seat and towering there in omnipotent command of the wagon-top. Appalling whistle-wup of the whip in his mighty and ferocious hand. Pitiful yelps from Mr. Puddlebox, head and shoulders exposed, baggy stern, surmounted by the bulging pockets, suspended above Mr. Wriford in the road and wriggling this way and that as the whip fell. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner and the whistle-wup! at each loudest word of it: "Now, my beauty, I've GOT yer!"

Pitiful yelp from Mr. Puddlebox: "Yowp! Hup!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out for yer."—"Yeep! Hup!"

"Before I have my BLINKIN' 'air cut."—"Yowp!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out, my beauty."—"Yowp! Yeep! Hup! Hell!"

Beneath the blows and the convulsive wrigglings they caused, Mr. Puddlebox's stern slipped lower down the sacks. Mr. Wriford scrambled to his feet from where he was fallen to the road. He was utterly terrified. He turned to run. He stopped, and a cry of new fear escaped him. Figure of Wriford stood there.

Mr. Wriford put a hand before his eyes and went a few steps to the side of the wagon and stopped again, irresolute.

There came from above again that bellow, again whistle-wup! of the whip, again from Mr. Puddlebox in agonized response: "Yowp! Hup!"

Mr. Wriford cried aloud: "Oh, why doesn't he drop down?"

It seemed to him that Figure of Wriford turned upon him with flaming eyes and grinding teeth and for the first time spoke to him: "Why, to give you time to get away and hide—to save you, you filthy coward!"

Mr. Wriford cried: "Oh—oh!"

And at once a dramatic change of scene. In one sudden and tremendous bound the flaming wagoner hurled himself from the seat to the road, rushed bawling around his wagon on the opposite side from where Mr. Wriford trembled, came full beneath the hanging stern of Mr. Puddlebox, and discharged upon it a cut of his whip that made pretty caresses of his former efforts. "Now I've got you, my beauty!"

With a loud and exceeding bitter cry, the beauty released his hold. As thunders the mountain avalanche, so thundered he. As falls the stricken oak so, avalanched, the flaming wagoner fell beneath him.

There was a very loud crash of breaking bottles, and immediately upon the hot summer air a pungent reek of whisky. There were enormous convulsions of Mr. Puddlebox and the wagoner entwined in one great writhing double monster prone in the roadway, and from them a tremendous cloud of dust. There were thuds, oaths, yawps, yeeps, bellows, and with them the pleasant music of broken bottles jangling. The double monster came to its four knees and writhed there; very laboriously—as if it were a rheumatic giant—writhed to its four legs and there stood and writhed amain; divided suddenly, and there was an appalling wallop from one to the other, and Mr. Puddlebox went reeling, musically jangling, and the flaming wagoner, carried round by the wallop's impetus, came staggering sideways a pace towards Mr. Wriford.

Mr. Wriford put down his head and shut his eyes and rushed at him. Mr. Wriford, as he rushed, saw Figure of Wriford disappear as if swallowed. Mr. Wriford caught his foot in the wheel, was discharged like a butting ram at the backs of the flaming wagoner's knees, clutched, wrenched, was down with the bawling wagoner beating at his head, and then, clutching and struggling, was overturned beneath him. Mr. Wriford heard a yell, first of warning, then of triumph, from Mr. Puddlebox: "Keep out of it, loony! Well done, boy! Well done! Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" There was a terrible run and kick from Mr. Puddlebox, and a terrible jerk and cry from the flaming wagoner, and in the next moment Mr. Wriford was on his feet and taking share, his eyes mostly shut, in a whirlwind, three-sided battle that spun up the road and down the road and across the road, and in which sometimes Mr. Wriford hit Mr. Puddlebox, and sometimes Mr. Puddlebox hit Mr. Wriford, and sometimes both hit the wagoner and sometimes by him were hit—a whirlwind, three-sided battle, in which, in short, by common intent of the three, the thing to do was simply to hit and to roar. Six arms whirling enormous thumps; six legs lashing tremendous kicks; the air and three bodies receiving them; one mouth bawling curses of the very pit of obscenity; another howling: "Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" Mr. Wriford's mouth laughing with fierce, exultant, hysterical glee.

The sudden rush that had rid Mr. Wriford of Figure of Wriford had returned him, and returned him with recklessness a hundredfold, to the mood, reckless of what happened to him, that had first embarked him on the wagon. And more than that. Out of the clutch of cowardice and lusting into the lust of action! When swinging his legs over the tail-board of the wagon, he had but gleefully thought of how now he was free, of caring nothing what happened to him, of gleefully throwing himself into any mad adventure. He had but thought of it; now he was in it! in it! in it! and in it! became the slogan of his fighting as he fought. "In it!" and a blind whirling wallop at the flaming wagoner's flaming face. "In it!" and colliding heavily with one of Mr. Puddlebox's glumphing rushes, and laughing aloud. "In it!" and spun staggering with a thump of one of the wagoner's whirling sledge-hammers, and staggering but to come with a fierce glee "In it! In it!" once again. Out of the clutch of cowardice that had him a moment before—cowardice bested for the first time in all these years of its nightmare sovereignty: and at that thought "In it! in it! in it!" with fierce and fiercer lust and fierce and fiercer and fiercest exultation. "In it!" Ah!

This extraordinary battle—extraordinary for a shrinking, gentlemanly, refined, well-dressed, comfortably housed, afternoon-tea-drinking Londoner—raged, if it had any order at all, about the towering person of the liver-cutting wagoner, and now went bawling to its end.

For this gentleman would no sooner get the liver of one antagonist in his fiery clutches than the other would come at him like a runaway horse and require attention that resulted in the escape of the first. And now a liver, heavily embedded in the bulky waist of Mr. Puddlebox, came at him head down with a force and with a fortune of aim that not even a stouter man than the wagoner could have withstood.

A very terrible buffet had just been inflicted upon Mr. Puddlebox. A sledge-hammer wallop from the wagoner had caught him in the throat ("Ooop!") and remained there, squeezing ("Arrp!"). The other hand had then clawed him like a tiger's bite in close proximity to his coveted liver ("Arrp! Ooop!"); and the two hands had finally hurled him ten feet away to end in a most shattering fall ("UMP!"). This manoeuvre was carried out by the flaming wagoner from the side of the ditch to which repeated rushes had driven him, and now he turned and directed a stupendous kick at Mr. Wriford, who came fiercely on his left. Mr. Wriford twisted; the immense boot but scraped him.

Then Mr. Puddlebox—the flaming wagoner on one leg, vitally exposed.

Mr. Puddlebox, head down, eyes shut, arms stretched behind him, hymned on to victory by the music of the broken bottles in his coat-tails, bounding across the road at the highest speed of which he was capable and into the liver-cutting gentleman's own liver and wind with stunning and irresistible force and rich clash of jangling glass.

Prone into the ditch the liver-cutting gentleman and there lay—advertising his presence only by those distressing groans which are at once the symptom of a winding and the only sound of which a winded is capable.

Mr. Puddlebox, also in the ditch, separated himself from the stricken mass and, stepping upon it, emerged upon the victorious battle-field rubbing his head.

A very loud, panting "Hurrah!" from Mr. Wriford; but before further felicitations could be exchanged, attention was demanded by a fourth party to the scene, who had been approaching unobserved for some time, and who now arrived and announced himself with: "Now then—hur!"

CHAPTER III
DISTURBED EQUIPOISE OF A COUNTERBALANCING MACHINE

This was a sergeant of police, short, red, hot, neckless, filled with a seeming excess of bile, or of self-importance, which he must needs correct or affirm—according as it was the one or the other—with a hur! at the end of each sentence, and balanced by prodigious development in the rear against the remarkable fullness beneath his tunic in the front, which he carried rather as though it were a drum or some other detachable article that must be conducted with care.

Mr. Wriford was a little tickled at this gentleman's appearance and, of the reckless mood that had him—panting, flaming, bruised, exulting—was not at all inclined to be hectored in the way that the hur! seemed to suggest was the sergeant's custom. Trained, however, to the Londoner's proper respect for a policeman, he answered, still panting: "There's been a bit of a fight."

"Saw that—hur!" said the sergeant. "Three of you when I come along. Where's the other—hur!"

"In the ditch," said Mr. Wriford. "Can't you hear him?"

The sergeant carried his drum carefully to the sound of the winded groans and, lowering it so far as he was able, peered over its circumference at the prostrate wagoner. In this position his posterior development, called upon to exercise its counterbalancing effect in the highest degree, displayed itself to immense advantage, and Mr. Wriford eyed it with a twitching of his face that spoke of a sudden freakish thought.

The sergeant readjusted his drum and turned upon him: "Who's done this? Hur!"

"Been a fight, I tell you," said Mr. Wriford, and laughed at the idea that had been in his mind and at the look it would have caused on the sergeant's face if he had executed it.

The sergeant drew in a breath that raised the drum in a motion that spelt rufflement. "Don't want you to tell me nothing but what you're asked," he said. "Man lying here hurt. Case of assault—hur!" He moved the drum slowly in the direction of Mr. Puddlebox and this time "hured" before he spoke. "Hur! Thought I knew you as I come along. Seen you afore—in the dock,—ain't I?"

"I've been in so many," said Mr. Puddlebox amicably, wiping his face from which the sweat streamed, "that if I've omitted yours, you must put it down to oversight, not unfriendliness."

"None o' that!" returned the sergeant. "No sauce. I know yer. Charged with assault, both of yer, an' anything said used evidence against yer. Hur! Who's this man down here?"

"Look and see if you know him," Mr. Wriford suggested. "I don't."

The drum was again advanced to the ditch, and the counterbalancing operation again very carefully put into process. Mr. Wriford's eyes danced with the wild idea that possessed him. To cap this tremendous hullabaloo in which he had been in it! in it! in it! To fly the wildest flight of all! To overturn, with a walloping kick, a policeman!

He drew near to Mr. Puddlebox and pulled his sleeve to attract his attention.

"Why, that's George!" said the sergeant, midway in operation of his counterbalancing machine. "That's old George Huggs—hur!"

"Can't be!" said Mr. Wriford and pulled Mr. Puddlebox's sleeve, and pointed first at the tremendous uniformed stern gingerly lowering the tunic-ed drum, then at his own foot, then down the road.

"Can't be!" returned the sergeant. "What yer mean, can't be! That's Miller Derrybill's George Huggs. George! George, you've got to come out and prosecute. George, I say—hur!"

Mr. Puddlebox, realizing the meaning of Mr. Wriford's pantomime, puffed out his cheeks with laughter bursting to be free and nodded. Mr. Wriford took one quick step and poised his foot at the tremendous target.

"George!" said the sergeant. "George Huggs! Hur!"

"Whoop!" said Mr. Wriford, and lashed.

The counterbalancing machine, not specified for this manner of usage, overturned with the slow and awful movement of a somersaulting elephant. One agonized scream from its owner, one dreadful bellow from George Huggs as the enormous sergeant plunged head foremost upon him—Mr. Wriford and Mr. Puddlebox, shouts of laughter handicapping their progress but impossible of control, at full speed down the road.

CHAPTER IV
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

I

Close of this day found the two in the outlying barn of a farm to which, as night fell, Mr. Puddlebox had led the way. There had intervened between it and the glorious battle-field an imperial midday banquet at an inn provided by Mr. Wriford, who found sixteen shillings in his pocket and had expended upon the meal four, upon sundries for further repasts one, and upon a bottle of whisky to replace the music in Mr. Puddlebox's coat-tail three and six. Thence a long amble to put much countryside between themselves and the mighty gentlemen left in the ditch, and so luxuriously to bed upon delicious hay, three parts of the whisky in the bottle, the other quarter comfortably packed into Mr. Puddlebox.

Through the banquet and through the day there had been bursts of laughter, started by one and immediately chorused by the other, at recollections of the stupendous struggle and the stupendous kick; also, prompted by Mr. Wriford, reiterated conversation upon a particular aspect of the affair.

"I did my share?" Mr. Wriford would eagerly inquire.

"Loony, you did two men's share," Mr. Puddlebox would reply. "And your kick of the policeman was another two men's—four men's share, boy. I didn't want you in it, loony. You're not fit for such, I thought. But you glumphed 'em, boy! You glumphed 'em like six men! Loony, you're unspooking—you're unspooking double quick!"

Mr. Wriford thrilled at that and laughed aloud and swung his arms in glee, and through the advancing night, lying warmly in the hay by Mr. Puddlebox's side, continued to feast upon it and to chuckle over it; and while he feasted and chuckled very often said to himself: "And that's the way to get rid of myself following me. When I was frightened by the wagon, he came. When I was walloping and smashing, he went and hasn't come back. Very well. Now I know."

II

Mr. Wriford enjoyed some hours of dreamless sleep. He awoke, and on the hay and in the darkness lay awake and thought.

"Well, this is a very funny state of affairs," Mr. Wriford thought. "Except that I'm in a barn and shall get locked up for a tramp if I'm caught, or at least into a devil of a row with the farmer if he catches me, I'm dashed if I know where I am. I've stolen a ride on a wagon, and I've had a most extraordinary fight in the road with the chap who was driving it. My eyes were shut half the time. I wonder I wasn't killed. I must have got some fearful smashes. I suppose I didn't feel them—you don't when your blood's up. I belted him a few stiff 'uns, though; by gad, I did! I don't know how I had the pluck. I wonder what's the matter with me—I mean to say, me! fighting a chap like that. And then I kicked a policeman. Good Lord, you know—that's about the most appalling thing a man can do! Kicked him bang over—heels over head! By gad, he did go a buster, though!" And at recollection of the buster that the police sergeant went, Mr. Wriford began to laugh and laughed quietly for a good while.

Then he began to think again. "I chucked myself into the river," Mr. Wriford thought. "I'd forgotten that. I've not thought about it since I did it. Good Lord, that was a thing to do! I didn't mean to. One moment I was walking along the Embankment, and the next I was falling in. I wonder what I did in between—how I got up, how I got in. I wanted to die. Yes, I tried to drown and die. I suppose I'm not dead? No, I can't possibly be dead. Everything's funny enough to be another world, but I take my oath I'm not dead. This chap Puddlebox—which can't possibly be his real name—thinks I'm mad. But I'm absolutely not mad. I may be dead—I know I'm not, though; at least I'm pretty sure I'm not—but I'm dashed if I'm mad. I've been too near madness—God knows—not to know it when I see it. Those sort of rushes-up in my head—I might have gone mad any time with one of those. Well, they're gone. I'll never have another; I feel absolutely sure of that. My head feels empty—feels as though it was a different part of me, like I've known my foot feel when it's gone to sleep and I can touch it without feeling it. Before, my head used to feel full, cram full. That's the only difference and that's not mad: it's just the reverse, if anything. What about seeing myself? Who am I then? I mean to say, am I the one I can see or the one I think I am? Well, the thing is, is there any one there when I see him or is it only imagination, only a delusion? If it's a delusion, then it's madness and I'm mad. Well, the very fact that I know that, proves it isn't a delusion and proves I'm absolutely sane; the very fact that I can lie here and argue about it and that I can't see it now because it isn't here, and can see it sometimes because it is there—that very fact proves I'm not mad. I think I know what it is. It's the same sort of thing as I remember once or twice years ago, when I first came to London and had a night out with some men and got a bit tipsy. I remember then sort of seeing myself—sort of trying to pull myself together and realise who I really was; and while I was trying, I could see myself playing the fool and staggering about and making an ass of myself. It was the drink that did that—that kind of separated me into two. Now I've done the same thing by trying to drown myself and nearly succeeding and by coming into this extraordinary state of affairs after living in a groove so long. Part of me is still in that old life and gets the upper hand of me sometimes, just as the drink used to. I've only got to realise that I've done with all that, and I've only got to smash about and not care what happens to me, and I'm all right.

"And I have done with it," cried Mr. Wriford aloud and fiercely, and sitting up and continuing to speak very quickly. "I have done with it! All these years I've been shut up and never enjoyed myself like other men. I've given up my life to others and got mixed up in their troubles and never been able to live for myself. Now I'm going to begin life all over again. I'm not going to care for anybody. I'm just going to let myself—go! I'm not going to care what happens. I'm not going to think of other people's feelings. I'm not going to be polite or care a damn what anybody thinks. If I get hurt, I'm just going to be hurt and not care. If I want to do what would have seemed wrong in the old days, I'm just going to do it and not care. I've cared too much! that's what's been wrong with me. Now I'm not going to care for anything or anybody. This chap Puddlebox said that what was wrong with me was that I thought too much about myself. I remember Brida telling me the same thing once. That's just exactly what it's not. All my life I've thought too much about other people. That's been the trouble. Done! Whoop, my boy, it's done! There's not going to be anybody in the world for myself except me—yes, and not even me. I'm going to be outside it all and just look on—and this me lying here can do what it likes, anything it likes. Hurt itself, starve itself, chuck itself down—that's one of the things I want to do: to get up somewhere and chuck myself down smash! and see what happens and laugh at it, whatever it is. I'm simply not going to care. I belong to myself—or rather myself belongs to me, and I'm going to do what I like with it—just exactly what I like. Puddlebox!"

Mr. Wriford turned to the recumbent form beside him to nudge it into wakefulness, but found it already awake. The gleam of Mr. Puddlebox's open eyes was to be seen in the darkness, and Mr. Puddlebox said: "Loony, how many of you are here this morning?"

"There's only me," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm not going to care—"

"You're spooked again, loony," Mr. Puddlebox interrupted him. "I've been listening to you talking."

"Well, you can listen to this," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm not going to care a damn what happens to me or care a hang for anybody—you or anybody."

"Very well," said Mr. Puddlebox. "That's settled."

"So it is," said Mr. Wriford, "and I tell you what I'm going to do first."

Sufficient of morning was by now stealing through cracks and crevices of the barn to radiate its gloom. Two great doors admitted to the interior. Between them ran a gangway of bricked floor with hay stacked upwards to the roof on either hand. Mr. Wriford could almost touch the roof where now he stood up, his feet sinking in the hay, and could see the top of the ladder by which overnight they had climbed to their bed. "What I'm going to do first," said Mr. Wriford, pointing to the gangway beneath them, "is to jump down there and see what happens."

"Well, I'll tell you what you are going to do last," returned Mr. Puddlebox, "and that also is jump down there, because you'll break your neck and that'll be the end of you, boy."

"I'm going to see," said Mr. Wriford. "Smash! That's just what I want to see."

"Half a minute," said Mr. Puddlebox and caught Mr. Wriford's coat. "Just a moment, my loony, for there's some one else wants to see also. There's some one coming in."

CHAPTER V
INTENTIONS, IN HIS NIGHTSHIRT, OF A FARMER

It was symptomatic of Mr. Wriford's state in these days that any interruption at once diverted him from his immediate purpose and turned him eagerly to whatever new excitement offered. So now, and here was an excitement that promised richly. Perched up there in the darkness and with the guilty knowledge of being a trespasser, it was a very tingling thing to hear the sounds to which Mr. Puddlebox had called attention and, peering towards the door from which they came, to speculate into what alarms they should develop. This was speedily discovered. The sounds proceeded from the door opposite to that by which entry had been made overnight, and from fumbling passed into a jingling of keys, a turning of the lock, and so gave admittance to a gleam of yellow light that immediately was followed by a man bearing a lantern swinging from his left hand and in his right a bunch of keys.

This was a curious gentleman who now performed curious actions. First he peered about him, holding the lantern aloft, and this disclosed him to be short and very ugly, having beneath a black growth on his upper lip yellow teeth that protruded and came down upon his lower. This gentleman was hatless and in a shirt without collar lumped so bulgingly into the top of his trousers as to present the idea that it was very long. Indeed, as he turned about, the lantern at arm's length above his head, it became clear to those who watched that this was his nightshirt that he wore. Next he set down the lantern, locked the door by which he had entered, placed across it an iron bar which fell into a bracket on either side, took up his light again, and proceeded along the gangway.

All this he did very stealthily—turning the key so that the lock could scarcely be heard as it responded, fitting his iron bar, first with great attention on the one side and then on the other, and then walking forward on his toes with manifest straining after secrecy. A rat scurried in the straw behind him, and he twisted round towards it as though terribly startled, with a quick hiss of his breath and with his hand that held the keys clapped swiftly to his heart.

Now he came beneath the stack upon which our two trespassers watched and wondered, and there remained for a space lost from view. There was to be heard a clinking as though he operated with his lantern, and with it a shuffling as though he disturbed the straw. Next he suddenly went very swiftly to the further door, passed through it in haste, and could be heard locking it from the outside, then wrenching at the key as though in a great hurry to be gone, then gone.

"That's funny," said Mr. Wriford. "Was he looking for something?"

"He was precious secret about it," said Mr. Puddlebox.

"Damn it," cried Mr. Wriford, "he's left his lamp behind. You can see the gleam."

Mr. Puddlebox, like curious hound that investigates the breeze, sat with chin up and with twitching nose; then sprang to his feet. "Curse it," cried Mr. Puddlebox, "he's set the place afire! Skip, loony, skip, or we're trapped!" and Mr. Puddlebox hurled himself towards the ladder, reversed himself upon it, missed a rung in his haste, and with a very loud cry disappeared with great swiftness, and with a very loud bump crashed with great force to the ground.

Mr. Wriford followed. Mr. Wriford, with no very clear comprehension of what was toward, but very eager, also slipped, also slithered, and also crashed.

"Hell!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Get off me, loony!"

Mr. Wriford was raised and rolled as by convulsion of a mountain beneath him. As he rolled, he had a glimpse of the lantern embedded in a nest of straw, its smoky flame naked of chimney, and from the flame towards the straw a strip of cloth with a little red smoulder midway upon it. As he sat up, the smoulder flared to a little puff of flame, ran swiftly down the cloth, flared again in the straw, then was eclipsed beneath the mighty Puddlebox, bounded forward from hands and knees upon it.

"The lamp, boy!" bellowed Mr. Puddlebox.

Mr. Wriford dashed at the lamp, bestowed upon it all the breath he could summon, and flattened himself beside Mr. Puddlebox upon a spread of flame that, as he blew, ran from lantern to straw.

"Good boy!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "That was quick," and himself at once did something quicker. Very cautiously first he raised his body upon his hands and knees, squinted beneath it, then dropped it again with immense swiftness and wriggled it violently into the straw. "I'm still burning down here," cried Mr. Puddlebox, and turned a face of much woe and concern towards Mr. Wriford, and inquired: "How's yours, loony?"

Mr. Wriford went through the first, or cautious, portion of Mr. Puddlebox's performance and announced: "Mine's out. Get up and let's have a look."

"Why," said Mr. Puddlebox irritably, "how to the devil can I get up? If I get up it will burst out, and if I lie here I shall be slowly roasted alive. This is the most devil of a predicament that ever a man was in, and I will challenge any man to be in a worse. Unch—my stomach is already like a pot on the fire. Ooch! Blink."

"Well, the fire's simply gaining while you lie there," cried Mr. Wriford. "I can smell it. It's simply gaining, you ass."

"Ass!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Ass! I tell you it is you will look an ass and a roast ass if I move. I can get no weight on it to crush it like this. Unch! What I am going to do is to turn over and press it down, moreover I can bear roasting better on that other side of me. Now be ready to give me a hand if the flames burst, and be ready to run, loony—up the ladder and try the roof."

Mr. Puddlebox then raised his chest upon his arms, made a face of great agony as the released pressure caused his stomach to feel the heat more fiercely, then with a stupendous convulsion hurled himself about and gave first a very loud cry as the new quarter of his person took the fire and then many wriggles and a succession of groans as with great courage he pressed his seat down upon the smouldering embers. Lower he wriggled, still groaning. "Ah," groaned Mr. Puddlebox. "Arp. Ooop. Erp. Blink. Eep. Erps. Ooop. Hell!" He then felt about him with his hands, and with the fingers of one finding what he sought and finding it uncommonly hot, brought his fingers to his mouth with a bitter yelp; fumbled again most cautiously, wriggled yet more determinedly, groaned anew, yet at longer intervals, and presently, a beaming smile overspreading his countenance, raised an arm aloft and announced triumphantly: "Out!"

"Out!" repeated Mr. Puddlebox, rising and beating smoulder from his waistcoat with one hand and from his trousers with the other.

"You were devilish plucky," said Mr. Wriford. "I can't help laughing now it's over, you know. But it was a narrow squeak. You were quick getting down, and you saved both our lives by hanging on like that."

"Why, you were quick, too, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You were quick after me as a flash—and plucky. I'd not have done it alone. You're coming on, boy; you're coming on. You're unspooking every minute."

"I did nothing," said Mr. Wriford. But he was secretly glad at the praise, and this, joined to his earlier determination to care nothing for anybody nor for what happened to him, spurred him to give eager aid to what Mr. Puddlebox now proposed.

"I am parboiled in front," said Mr. Puddlebox, finishing his beating of himself, "and I am underdone behind; but the fire is out, and now it is for us to get out. Loony, that was a damned, cold-blooded villain that came here to burn us, and a damned ugly villain as ever I saw, and I will challenge any man to show me an uglier. There is a lesson to be taught him, my loony, and there is compensation to be paid by him; and this he shall be taught and shall pay before I am an hour older in sin."

With this Mr. Puddlebox marched very determinedly up the ladder which he had descended very abruptly, and preceded Mr. Wriford across the top of the hay to the point where this was nearest met by the sloping roof. "It's all very fine," doubted Mr. Wriford, addressing the determined back as they made their way, "it's all very fine, Puddlebox, but mind you we look like getting ourselves in a devil of a fix if we go messing round this chap, whoever he is. He's probably the farmer. If he is it looks as if he wanted to fire his barn to get the insurance; and it'll be an easy thing for him, and a jolly good thing, to shove the blame on us. That's what I think."

"Loony," returned Mr. Puddlebox, arrived under the roof and facing him, "you think too much, and that's just what's the matter with you, as I've told you before. To begin with, his barn has not been burnt, and that's just where we've got him. We are heroes, my loony, and I am a burnt hero, and some one's got to pay for it."

Mr. Wriford's reply to this was first a look of sharp despair upon his face and then to raise his fists and drum them fiercely upon his head.

"Why, boy! boy!" cried Mr. Puddlebox and caught Mr. Wriford's hands and held them. "Why, what to the devil is that for?"

"That's for what I was doing!" cried Mr. Wriford. "That's because I stopped to think. I'm never going to think any more, and I'm never going to stop any more. And if I catch myself stopping or thinking I shall kill myself if need be!"

"Well, why to the devil," said Mr. Puddlebox very quickly, "do you stop to beat yourself instead of doing what I tell you? Where there's a little hole, my loony, there's easy work to make a big one. Here's plenty of little holes in these old tiles of this roof. Up on my shoulders, loony, and get to work on them."

CHAPTER VI
RISE AND FALL OF INTEREST IN A FARMER

Symptomatic again of Mr. Wriford's condition that his storm was gone as quickly as it came. Now filled him only the adventure of breaking out; and he was no sooner, with much laughter, straddled upon Mr. Puddlebox's shoulders and pulling at the tiles, than with smallest effort the little holes in the weather-worn roofing became the large one that Mr. Puddlebox had promised.

"Whoa!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, plunging in the yielding hay beneath Mr. Wriford's weight.

"Whoa!" echoed Mr. Wriford, and to check the staggering grabbed at the crumbling tiles.

"Blink!" cried Mr. Puddlebox and collapsed. "Curse me, is the roof come in on us?"

Mr. Wriford extricated himself and stood away, rubbing his head that had received tiles like discharge of thunderbolts. "A pretty good chunk of it has," said Mr. Wriford. "There's your hole right enough."

This was indeed a great rent capable of accommodating their purpose and more; and Mr. Puddlebox, whose head also needed rubbing, now arose and examined it with his customary cheerfulness. "That's a fine hole, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and a clever one also, for here to this side of it runs a beam which, if it will support us, will have us out, and if it will not, will fetch the whole roof down and have us out that way. Jump for the beam, boy, while I lift you."

Mr. Puddlebox's hands on either side of Mr. Wriford's hips, jumping him, and then at his legs, shoving him, enabled Mr. Wriford with small exertion soon to be straddled along the roof, and then with very enormous exertion to engage in the prodigious task of dragging Mr. Puddlebox after him. When this was accomplished so far as that Mr. Puddlebox's arms, head and chest were upon the beam and the remainder of his body suspended from it, "It's devilish steep up here," grunted Mr. Wriford, flat on his face, hauling amain on the slack of Mr. Puddlebox's trousers, and not at all at his strongest by reason of much laughter at Mr. Puddlebox's groans and strainings; "it's devilish steep and nothing to hold on to. Look out how you come or you'll have us both over and break our necks."

"Well, when to the devil shall I come?" groaned Mr. Puddlebox. "This is the very devil of a pain to have my stomach in; and I challenge any man to have his stomach in a worse. I must drop down again or I am like to be cut in halves."

"I'll never get you up again if you do," Mr. Wriford told him. "I've got your trousers tight to heave you if you'll swing. Swing your legs sideways, and when I say 'Three' swing them up on the beam as high as you can."

The counting of One and Two set Mr. Puddlebox's legs, aided by Mr. Wriford's hands on his stern, swinging like a vast pendulum. "Hard as you can as you come back," called Mr. Wriford, "and hang on like death when you're up—THREE!"

With a most tremendous swing the boots of the pendulum reached the roof and clawed a foothold. Between heels and one shoulder its powerful stern depended ponderously above the hay. "Heave yourself!" shouted Mr. Wriford, hauling on the trousers. "Roll yourself! Heave yourself!" Mr. Puddlebox heaved enormously, rolled tremendously, and, like the counterbalancing machine of the police sergeant, up came his stern, and prodigiously over.

"Look out!" cried Mr. Wriford. "Look out! Let go, you ass!"

"Blink!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, flat and rolling on the steep pitch of the roof. "Blink! We're killed!" clutched anew at Mr. Wriford, tore him from his moorings, and, knotted with him in panic-stricken embrace, whirled away to take the plunge and then the drop.

The strawyard in which the barn stood was fortunately well bedded in straw about the walls of the building. When, with tremendous thump, with the familiar sound of smashing glass and familiar scent of whisky upon the morning air, the two had come to rest and had discovered themselves unbroken—"Why the dickens didn't you let go of me?" Mr. Wriford demanded. "I could have hung on with one hand and held you."

Mr. Puddlebox sat up with his jolly smile and glancing at the height of their descent gave with much fervour:

"O ye falls of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"

Mr. Wriford jumped up and waved his arms and laughed aloud and then cried: "That was all right. Now I'm not caring! Now I'm living!"

"Why, look you, my loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, beaming upon him with immense delight, "look you, that was very much all right; and that is why I return praise for it. We might have been killed in falling from there, but most certainly we are not killed; and if we had not fallen we should still be up there, and how I should have found heart to make such a devil of a leap I am not at all aware. Here we are down and nothing the worse save for this disaster that, curse me, my whisky is gone again. Thus there is cause for praise in everything, as I have told you, and in this fall such mighty good cause as I shall challenge you or any man to look at that roof and deny. Now," continued Mr. Puddlebox, getting to his feet, "do you beat your head again, boy, or do we proceed to the farmhouse?"

Mr. Wriford said seriously, "No, I'm damned if I beat my head now, because that time I didn't stop and didn't think except just for a second when we were falling, and then I couldn't stop even if I'd wanted to. No, I'm damned if I beat my head this time."

"What it is," said Mr. Puddlebox, emptying his tail-pocket of the broken whisky bottle, and proceeding with Mr. Wriford towards the farmhouse, "what it is, is that you are damned if you do beat your head—that is, you are spooked, loony, which is the same thing."

Mr. Wriford paid no apparent attention to this, but his glee at believing that, as he had said, he now was not caring and now was living, gave an excited fierceness to his share in their immediate behaviour, which now became very extraordinary.

CHAPTER VII
PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO HIS FARM OF A FARMER

I

The front door of the farmhouse, embowered in a porch, was found to be on the side further from the strawyard. A fine knocker, very massive, hung upon the door, and this Mr. Puddlebox now seized and operated very loudly, with effect of noise which, echoing through the silent house and through the still air of early morning, would in former circumstances have utterly horrified Mr. Wriford and have put him to panic-stricken flight in very natural apprehension of what it would bring forth. Now, however, it had no other effect upon him than first to make him give a nervous gasp and nervous laugh of nervous glee, and next himself to seize the knocker and put into it all the determination of those old days forever ended and these new days of freedom in which he cared for nothing and for nobody now begun.

Fiercely Mr. Wriford knocked until his arm was tired and then flung down the knocker with a last crash and turned on Mr. Puddlebox a flushed face and eyes that gleamed. "I don't care a damn what happens!" he cried.

"My word," said Mr. Puddlebox, gazing at him, "something is like to happen now after all that din. You've got hold of yourself this time, boy."

Mr. Wriford laughed recklessly. "I'll show you," he cried, "I'll show you this time!" and took up the knocker again.

But something was shown without his further effort. His hand was scarcely put to the knocker, when a casement window grated above the porch in which they stood, and a very harsh voice cried: "What's up? Who's that? What's the matter there?" and then with a change of tone: "What's that light in the sky? Is there a fire?"

Mr. Wriford, his new fierceness of not caring, of letting himself go, fierce upon him, was for rushing out of the porch to look up at the window and face this inquiry, but Mr. Puddlebox a moment restrained him. "That's our old villain for sure," Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "There's no ghost of light in the sky that fire would make; but he's prepared for one, and that proves him the old villain that he is."

"Now, then!" rasped the voice. "Who are you down there? What's up? What's that light in the sky?"

Out from the porch charged Mr. Wriford, Mr. Puddlebox with a hand on his arm bidding him: "Go warily, boy; leave this to me."

So they faced the window, and there, sure enough, framed within it, was displayed the gentleman that had been seen with the lantern, with the black scrub upon his upper lip, and with the yellow teeth protruded beneath it.

"That light is the moon," Mr. Puddlebox informed him pleasantly. "Luna, the dear old moon. Queen-Empress of the skies."

"The moon!" shouted the yellow-toothed gentleman. "The moon! Who the devil are you, and what's your business?"

Mr. Puddlebox responded stoutly to this rough address. "Why, what to the devil else should it be but the moon? Is it something else you're looking for—?"

The yellow-toothed gentleman interrupted him by leaning out to his waist from the window and bellowing: "Something else! Come, what the devil's up and what's your business, or I'll rouse the house and set about the pair of 'ee."

Then Mr. Wriford, no longer to be restrained. Mr. Wriford, fierce to indulge his resolution not to care for anybody and shaking with the excitement of it. Mr. Wriford, to Mr. Puddlebox's much astonishment, in huge and ferocious bawl: "What's up!" bawled Mr. Wriford, hopping about in reckless ecstasy of fierceness. "What's up! Why, you know jolly well what's up, you beastly old villain. Tried to set your barn afire, you ugly-faced old scoundrel! I saw you! I was in there! I saw you with your lamp! Come down, you rotten-toothed old fiend! Come down and have your face smashed, you miserable old sinner!"

The gentleman thus opprobriously addressed disappeared with great swiftness, and immediately could be heard thumping down-stairs with sounds that betokened bare feet.

"That's done it," said Mr. Wriford, wiping his face which was very hot, and placed himself before the porch to await the expected arrival.

"My goodness, it has," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You've let yourself go this time, boy. And what the devil is going to happen next—

"I'll show you," cried Mr. Wriford and, as the key turned in the lock and the door opened, proceeded to the demonstration thus promised with a fierceness of action even more astonishing than his earlier outburst of words.

The door was no sooner opened to reveal the yellow-toothed gentleman in his nightshirt and bare feet, than Mr. Wriford rushed upon him, seized him by his flowing garment, and dragged him forth into the yard. Mr. Wriford then revolved very swiftly, causing the yellow-toothed gentleman, who had the wider ambit to perform, to revolve more swiftly yet, and this on naked feet that made him complain very loudly and bound very highly when they lighted upon a stone, spun him in these dizzy circles down the yard, and after a final maze at final speed released him with the result that the yellow-toothed gentleman first performed a giddy whirl entirely on his own account, then the half of another on his heels and in mortal danger of overbalancing, and then, with the best intentions in the world to complete this circuit, was checked by waltzing into his duck-pond, wherein with a very loud shriek he disappeared.

Mr. Wriford again wiped his face, which was now much hotter than before, and with a cry of "Come on!" to Mr. Puddlebox, who was staring in amazement towards the pond and its struggling occupant, made a run to the house. Mr. Puddlebox joined him within the door, and Mr. Wriford then locked the door behind them, and looking very elatedly at Mr. Puddlebox, inquired of him triumphantly: "Well, what about that?"

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I never saw the like of it. It's a licker."

"So it is!" cried Mr. Wriford. "I fairly buzzed him, didn't I? You needn't whisper. There's no one here but ourselves, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that chap's managed to get the place to himself so that he could make no mistake about getting his barn burnt down. Anyway, I'm going to see, and I don't care a dash if there is." And by way of seeing, Mr. Wriford put up his head and shouted: "Hulloa! Hulloa, is there anybody in here?"

"Hulloa!" echoed Mr. Puddlebox, subscribing with great glee to Mr. Wriford's excitement.

"Hulloa!" cried Mr. Wriford in a very loud voice. "If anybody wants a hit in the eye come along down and ask for it!"

To this engaging invitation there was from within the house no answer; but from without, against the door, a very loud thud which was the yellow-toothed gentleman hurling himself against it, and then his fists beating against it and his voice crying: "Let me in! Let me in, won't you!"

"No, I won't!" called Mr. Wriford, and answered the banging with lusty and defiant kicks. "Get back to your pond or I'll come and throw you there."

"I'm cold," cried the yellow-toothed gentleman, changing his voice to one of entreaty. "Look here, I want to talk to you."

"Go and light your barn again and warm yourself," shouted Mr. Puddlebox; but the laughter with which he shouted it was suddenly checked, for the yellow-toothed gentleman was heard to call: "Hullo! Hi! Jo! Quick, Jo! Come along quick!"

"Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "we ought to have got away from this while he was in the pond. What to the devil's going to happen now?"

"Listen," said Mr. Wriford; but they had scarcely listened a minute before there happened a sound of breaking glass in an adjoining room. "They're getting in through a window," cried Mr. Wriford. "We must keep them out."

Several doors led from the spacious old hall in which they stood, and Mr. Puddlebox, choosing one, chose the wrong one, for here was an apartment whose window stood intact and beyond which the sounds of entry could still be heard. A further door in this room that might have led to them was found to be locked and without key. Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford charged back to the hall, down the hall alongside this room, through a door which led to a passage behind it, and thence through another door which revealed one gentleman in his nightshirt, yellow and black with mire from head to foot, who was reaching down a wide-mouthed gun from the wall, and another gentleman in corduroys, having a bucolic countenance which was very white, who in the act of entry had one leg on the floor and the other through the window.

II

"If they've got in we'll run for it," Mr. Puddlebox had said as they came down the passage. But the room was entered so impetuously that the only running done was, perforce, into it, and at that with a stumbling rush on the part of Mr. Puddlebox into the back of the nightshirt and the collapse of Mr. Wriford over Mr. Puddlebox's heels upon him. Mr. Puddlebox encircled the nightshirt about its waist with his arms; the nightshirt, gun in hand, staggered towards the corduroy and with the gun swept its supporting leg from under it; the gun discharged itself through its bell-shaped mouth with an appalling explosion; the corduroy with a loud shriek to the effect that he was dead fell upon the head of the nightshirt; and there was immediately a tumult of four bodies with sixteen whirling legs and arms, no party to which had any clear perception as to the limbs that belonged to himself, or any other strategy of campaign than to claw and thump at whatever portion of whoever's body offered itself for the process. There were, with all this, cries of very many kinds and much obscenity of meaning, changing thrice to a universal bellow of horror as first a table and its contents discharged itself upon the mass, then a dresser with an artillery of plates and dishes, and finally a grandfather clock which, descending sideways along the wall, swept with it a comprehensive array of mural decorations.

Assortment of arms and legs was at length begun out of all this welter by the corduroyed gentleman who, finding himself not dead as he had believed, but in great danger of reaching that state in some very horrible form, found also his own hands and knees and upon them crawled away very rapidly towards an adjoining room whose door stood invitingly open. There were fastened to his legs as he did so a pair of hands whose owner he first drew after him, then dislodged by, on the threshold of the open door, beating at them with a broken plate, and having done so, sprung upright to make for safety. The owner of the hands however sprung with him, attached them—and it was Mr. Wriford—to his throat, and thrust him backwards into the adjoining room and into the midst of several shallow pans of milk with which the floor of this room was set.

This apartment was, in fact, the dairy; and here, while thunder and crashing proceeded from the other room in which Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt weltered, extraordinary contortions to the tune of great splashing and tin-pan crashing were forced upon the corduroyed gentleman by Mr. Wriford's hands at his throat. Broad shelves encircled this room, and first the corduroyed gentleman was bent backwards over the lowest of these until the back of his head adhered to some pounds of butter, then whirled about and bent sideways until in some peril of meeting his end by suffocation in cream, then inclined to the other side until a basket of eggs were no longer at their highest market value, and finally hurled from Mr. Wriford to go full length and with a large white splash into what pans of milk remained in position on the floor.

Mr. Wriford, with a loud "Ha!" of triumph, and feeling, though greatly bruised in the first portion of the fight and much besmeared with dairy-produce in the second, much more of a man than he had ever felt before, then dashed through the door and locked it upon the corduroy's struggles to free himself from death in a milky grave, and then prepared to give fierce assistance to the drier but as deadly fray still waging between Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt.

Upon the welter of crockery and other debris here to view, these combatants appeared to be practising for a combined rolling match, or to be engaged in rolling the litter into a smooth and equable surface. Locked very closely together by their arms, and with equal intensity by their legs, they rolled first to one end of the room or to a piece of overturned furniture and then, as if by common consent, back again to the other end or to another obstacle. This they performed with immense swiftness and with no vocal sounds save very distressed breathing as they rolled and very loud and simultaneous Ur! as they checked at the end of a roll and started back for the next.

As Mr. Wriford watched, himself breathing immensely after his own exertions yet laughing excitedly at what he saw, he was given opportunity of taking part by the rollers introducing a new diversion into their exercise. This was provided by the grandfather clock, which, embedded in the debris like a partly submerged coffin, now obstructed their progress. A common spirit of splendid determination not to be stopped by it appeared simultaneously to animate them. With one very loud Ur! they came against it; with a secondhand a third and each time a louder Ur! charged it again and again; with a fourth Ur! magnificently mounted it; and with a fifth, the debris on this side being lower, plunged down from it. The shock in some degree relaxed their embrace one with the other. From their locked forms a pair of naked legs upshot. Mr. Wriford jumped for the ankles, clutched them amain, and with the information "I've got his legs!" and with its effect, encouraged Mr. Puddlebox to a mighty effort, whereby at length he broke free from the other's grasp, sat upright upon the nightshirt's chest, and then, securing its arms, faced about towards Mr. Wriford, and seated himself upon the nightshirt's forehead.

"Where's yours?" said Mr. Puddlebox, when he had collected sufficient breath for the question.

"Locked up in there," said Mr. Wriford, nodding his head towards the dairy.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "this has been the most devil of a thing that ever any man has been in, and I challenge you or any man ever to have been in a worse."

"I'll have you in a worse," bawled the nightshirt. "I'll—" and as though incapable of giving sufficient words to his intentions he opened his mouth very widely and emitted from it a long and roaring bellow. Into this cavern of his jaws Mr. Puddlebox, now kneeling on the nightshirt's arms, dropped a cloth cap very conveniently abandoned by the corduroy; and then, facing across the prostrate form, Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford went into a hysteria of laughter only checked at last by the nightshirt, successfully advantaging himself of the weakening effect of their mirth, making a tremendous struggle to overthrow them.

"But, loony," said Mr. Puddlebox when the farmer was again mastered, "we are best out of this, for such a battle I could by no means fight again."

"Well, I don't care," said Mr. Wriford. "I don't care a dash what happens or who comes. Still, we'd better go. First we must tie this chap up and then clean ourselves. My man's all right in there. There's no window where he is—only a grating round the top. I'll find something to fix this one with if you can hold his legs."

This Mr. Puddlebox, by kneeling upon the nightshirt's arms and stretching over them to his legs, was able to do, and Mr. Wriford, voyaging the dishevelled room, gave presently a gleeful laugh and presented himself before Mr. Puddlebox with a wooden box and with information that made Mr. Puddlebox laugh also and the nightshirt, unable to shout, to express his personal view in new and tremendous struggles.

"Nails," said Mr. Wriford, "and a hammer. We'll nail him down;" and very methodically, working along each side of each extended arm, and down each border of the nightshirt pulled taut across his person, proceeded to attach the yellow-toothed gentleman to the floor more literally and more closely than any occupier, unless similarly fastened, can ever have been attached to his boyhood's home.

"There!" said Mr. Wriford, stepping back and regarding his handiwork, which was indeed very creditably performed, with conscionable satisfaction. "There you are, my boy, as tight as a sardine lid, and if you utter a sound you'll get one through your head as well."

This, however, was a contingency which the nightshirt, thanks to the cap in his mouth, was in no great danger of arousing, and leaving him to enjoy the flavour of his gag and his unique metallic bordering, which from the hue of his countenance and the flame of his eyes he appeared indisposed to do, there now followed on the part of Mr. Wriford and Mr. Puddlebox a very welcome and a highly necessary adjustment of their toilets. It was performed by Mr. Puddlebox with his mouth prodigiously distended with a meal collected from the kitchen, and by Mr. Wriford, as he cooled, with astonished reflection upon the extraordinary escapades which he had now added to his exploits of the previous day. "Well, this is a most extraordinary state of affairs for me," reflected Mr. Wriford, much as he had reflected earlier in the morning. "Most extraordinary, I'm dashed if it isn't! I've pretty well killed a chap and drowned him in milk; and I've slung a chap into a pond and then nailed him down by his nightshirt. Well, I'm doing things at last; and I don't care a dash what happens; and I don't care a dash what comes next."

III

Now this cogitation took place in an upper room whither Mr. Wriford had repaired in quest of soap and brushes, and what came next came at once and came very quickly, being first reported by Mr. Puddlebox, who at this point rushed up-stairs to announce as rapidly as his distended mouth would permit: "Loony, there's a cart come up to the door with four men in it—hulkers!" and next illustrated by a loud knocking responsive to which there immediately arose from the imprisoned corduroy a great shouting and from the gagged and nailed-down nightshirt a muffled blaring as of a cow restrained from its calf.

Very much quicker than might be supposed, and while Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford stared one upon the other in irresolute concern, these sounds blended into an enormous hullabaloo below stairs which spoke of the entry by the window of the new arrivals, of the release from his gag of the nailed-down nightshirt and from his milky gaol of the imprisoned corduroy, and finally of wild and threatening search which now came pouring very alarmingly up the stairs.

Mr. Wriford locked the door, Mr. Puddlebox opened the window, and immediately their door was first rattled with cries of "Here they are!" and then assailed by propulsion against it of very violent bodies.

The drop from the window was not one to be taken in cold blood. It was taken, nevertheless, side by side and at hurtling speed by Mr. Wriford and by Mr. Puddlebox through each half of the casement; and this done, and the concussion recovered from, the farm surroundings which divided them from the road were taken also at headlong bounds accelerated when midway across by a loud crash and by ferocious view-hulloas from the window.

The boundary hedge was gained. There was presented to the fugitives a roadside inn having before it, travel-stained, throbbing, and unattended, a very handsome touring motor-car. There was urged upon their resources as they jumped to the road the sight of two men red-hot in their rear and, more alarmingly, three led by the milky corduroy short-cutting towards their flank.

"Blink!" gasped Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hide!" and ran two bewildered paces up the road and three distracted paces down it.

"Hide where?" panted Mr. Wriford, his wits much shaken by his run, by the close sight of the pursuit, and more than ever by Mr. Puddlebox bumping into him as he turned in his first irresolution and colliding with him again as he turned in his second.

"Blink!—Here," cried Mr. Puddlebox, made a dash at the motor-car—Mr. Wriford in bewildered confusion on his heels—opened the door, and closing it behind them, crouched with Mr. Wriford on the floor.

"Run for it the opposite way as soon as they pass us," said Mr. Puddlebox. "This is a very devil of a business, and I will challenge—Here they come!"

But, quicker than they, came also another, and he from the inn. This was a young man in livery of a chauffeur, who emerged very hurriedly wiping his mouth and telling the landlord who followed him: "My gov'nor won't be half wild if I ain't there by two o'clock." With which he jumped very nimbly to his wheel, released his clutch, and with no more than a glance at the milky corduroy and his friends who now came baying down the hedge, was in a moment bearing Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford at immense speed towards wherever it was that his impatient gov'nor awaited him.

Mr. Wriford put his hands to his head and said, more to himself than to Mr. Puddlebox: "Well, this is the most extraordinary—"

Mr. Puddlebox settled his back against the seat, and cocking a very merry eye at Mr. Wriford, chanted with enormous fervour:

"O ye motors of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

CHAPTER VIII
FIRST PERSON EXTRAORDINARY

"Well—" said Mr. Wriford to himself.

There is to be added here, as bringing Mr. Wriford to this exclamation, that at midday the chauffeur, having whirled through rural England at great speed for some hours on end, again drew up at a roadside inn no less isolated than that at which he had first accommodated his passengers, and had no sooner repaired within than Mr. Puddlebox, first protruding a cautious head and finding no soul in sight, then led out the way through the further door and then up the road until a friendly hedgeside invited them to rest and to the various foods which Mr. Puddlebox had brought from the farm and now produced from his pockets.

Mr. Wriford ate in silence, and nothing that Mr. Puddlebox could say could fetch him from his thoughts. "Well," thought Mr. Wriford, "this is the most extraordinary state of affairs! A week ago I was an editor in London and afraid of everything and everybody. Now I've been in the river, and I've stolen a ride in a wagon, and I've had a devil of a fight with a wagoner, and I've kicked a policeman head over heels bang into a ditch, and I've nearly been burnt alive, and I've broken out through the roof of a barn and fallen a frightful buster off it, and I've slung a chap into a pond, and I've nearly killed a chap and half-drowned him in milk, and I've nailed a man to the floor by his nightshirt, and I've jumped out of a high window and been chased for my life, and I've stolen a ride in a motor-car, and where the devil I am now I haven't the remotest idea. Well, it's the most extraordinary—!"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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