flabber-gastered. He had all the intuition of the simple-minded.
He knew there was no fly. But the ground was suddenly cut from
his feet. There is a limit to knighterrantry --dragons and false
knights are all very well, but flies! Fictitious flies! Whatever
the trouble was, it was evidently not his affair. He felt he had
made a fool of himself again. He would have mumbled some sort of
apology; but the other man in brown gave him no time, turned on
him abruptly, even fiercely. "I hope," he said, "that your
curiosity is satisfied?"

"Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Then we won't detain you."

And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his machine about,
struggled upon it, and resumed the road southward. And when he
learnt that he was not on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible
to turn and go back, for that would be to face his shame again,
and so he had to ride on by Brook Street up the hill to
Haslemere. And away to the right the Portsmouth road mocked at
him and made off to its fastnesses amid the sunlit green and
purple masses of Hindhead, where Mr. Grant Allen writes his Hill
Top Novels day by day.

The sun shone, and the wide blue hill views and pleasant valleys
one saw on either hand from the sandscarred roadway, even the
sides of the road itself set about with grey heather scrub and
prickly masses of gorse, and pine trees with their year's growth
still bright green, against the darkened needles of the previous
years, were fresh and delightful to Mr. Hoopdriver's eyes But the