"She means," said the Examiner, raising himself for another last effort,
"that it is time you changed your coal merchant," and so saying he died
again.

I was thunderstruck: the Wenuses understood coals!

And then I ran; I could stand it no longer. The game was up, the cosmic
game for which I had laboured so long and strenuously, and with one
despairing yell of "Ulla! Ulla!" I unfastened the chain, and, leaping
over the limp and prostrate form of the unhappy Tibbles, fled darkling
down the deserted street.




II.

THE MAN AT UXBRIDGE ROAD.


At the corner a happy thought struck me: the landlord of the "Dog and
Measles" kept a motor car. I found him in his bar and killed him. Then I
broke open the stable and let loose the motor car. It was very restive,
and I had to pat it. "Goo' Tea Rose," I said soothingly, "goo'
Rockefeller, then." It became quiet, and I struck a match and started
the paraffinalia, and in a moment we were under weigh.

I am not an expert motist, although at school I was a fairly good
hoop-driver, and the pedestrians I met and overtook had a bad time. One
man said, as he bound up a punctured thigh, that the Heat Ray of the