themselves, and he dismounted and sat awhile by the roadside.

It was at a charming little place between Esher and Cobham, where a

bridge crosses a stream, that Mr. Hoopdriver came across the other

cyclist in brown. It is well to notice the fact here, although the

interview was of the slightest, because it happened that subsequently

Hoopdriver saw a great deal more of this other man in brown. The other

cyclist in brown had a machine of dazzling newness, and a punctured

pneumatic lay across his knees. He was a man of thirty or more, with a

whitish face, an aquiline nose, a lank, flaxen moustache, and very fair

hair, and he scowled at the job before him. At the sight of him Mr.

Hoopdriver pulled himself together, and rode by with the air of one born

to the wheel. "A splendid morning," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "and a fine

surface."

The morning and you and the surface be everlastingly damned!" said the

other man in brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble

and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a pleasing sense of

having duly asserted the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists together,

of having behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood of the

wheel. The other man in brown watched his receding aspect. "Greasy

proletarian," said the other man in brown, feeling a prophetic dislike.

"Got a suit of brown, the very picture of this. One would think his sole

aim in life had been to caricature me. It's Fortune's way with me. Look

at his insteps on the treadles! Why does Heaven make such men?"

The Wheels of Chance