peerage. Involuntarily at the thought of his funds Hoopdriver's
right hand left the handle and sought his breast pocket, to be
immediately recalled by a violent swoop of the machine towards
the cemetery. Whirroo! Just missed that half-brick! Mischievous
brutes there were in the world to put such a thing in the road.
Some blooming 'Arry or other! Ought to prosecute a few of these
roughs, and the rest would know better. That must be the buckle
of the wallet was rattling on the mud-guard. How cheerfully the
wheels buzzed!

The cemetery was very silent and peaceful, but the Vale was
waking, and windows rattled and squeaked up, and a white dog came
out of one of the houses and yelped at him. He got off, rather
breathless, at the foot of Kingston Hill, and pushed up. Halfway
up, an early milk chariot rattled by him; two dirty men with
bundles came hurrying down. Hoopdriver felt sure they were
burglars, carrying home the swag.

It was up Kingston Hill that he first noticed a peculiar feeling,
a slight tightness at his knees; but he noticed, too, at the top
that he rode straighter than he did before. The pleasure of
riding straight blotted out these first intimations of fatigue. A
man on horseback appeared; Hoopdriver, in a tumult of soul at his
own temerity, passed him. Then down the hill into Kingston, with
the screw hammer, behind in the wallet, rattling against the oil
can. He passed, without misadventure, a fruiterer's van and a
sluggish cartload of bricks. And in Kingston Hoopdriver, with the
most exquisite sensations, saw the shutters half removed from a
draper's shop, and two yawning youths, in dusty old black jackets
and with dirty white comforters about their necks, clearing up