Maud, however, as she approached the cans, kept fairly in the middle of
the road--and stopped!

Heavens! She stopped so short that I gasped for breath. All in a twinkling
the steel rods dropped into position beside her legs, the cuffs snapped,
and the Hawkins Horse-brake had worked at last!

Poor old Maud! She slid a few yards with rigid limbs, squealing in terror,
and then crashed to the ground like an overturned toy horse.

Hawkins shot off into space, and at the moment I didn't care greatly
where he landed. I was vaguely conscious that he collided head-on with
the row of milk-cans, but my main anxiety was to shut off my power, set
the brake, point the auto into the ditch, and jump.

And I did it all in about one second.

After the jump, my recollection grows hazy. I know that one of my feet
landed in an open milk-can, and that I grabbed wildly at several others.
Then the cans and I toppled headlong over the embankment and went down,
down, down, while, fainter and fainter, I could hear something like:

"Whoa! Whoa! Gol darn ye! Ow! Stop that hoss! Bang! Rattle! Rattle!
Bang! Whoa! Stop, can't ye?"

Then a peculiarly unyielding milk-can landed on my head and I seemed to
float away.

I have reason to believe that I sat up about two minutes later. The crash