His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back
his chair.

"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on,
Ford," he said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear
us."

Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the
twenty-one miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven
times. Each time this misfortune befell them one young man
scattered tools in the road and on his knees hammered
ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two occupants
of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time
the route by which they returned was different from the one
by which they had set forth. Sometimes they followed the
beaten path down the cliff or, as it chanced to be, across
the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of the cliff;
sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car
the procedure of each was alike--each produced a pencil and
on the face of his "Half Inch" road map traced strange,
fantastic signs.

At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer
and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf
links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day
of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner.
The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the