pocket, and it's all mixed up with the burnt stuff, and that's too 'ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your way?”      

       “All in the day's work,” said the gentleman with the motor-car, and turned to Edna. “Very pleased indeed,” he said, “if you'll come with us. We're late for dinner as it is, so it won't make much difference for us to go home by way of Clapham. We've got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I'm afraid you'll find us a little slow.”      

       “But what's Bert going to do?” said Edna.     

       “I don't know that we can accommodate Bert,” said the motor-car gentleman,       “though we're tremendously anxious to oblige.”      

       “You couldn't take the whole lot?” said Bert, waving his hand at the deboshed and blackened ruins on the ground.     

       “I'm awfully afraid I can't,” said the Oxford man. “Awfully sorry, you know.”      

       “Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit,” said Bert. “I got to see the thing through. You go on, Edna.”      

       “Don't like leavin' you, Bert.”      

       “You can't 'elp it, Edna.”...     

       The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackened shirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixed ironwork and ashes of his vanished motor-bicycle, a melancholy figure. His retinue of spectators had shrunk now to half a dozen figures. Flossie and Grubb were preparing to follow her desertion.     

       “Cheer up, old Bert!” cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. “So long.”      

       “So long, Edna,” said Bert.     

       “See you to-morrer.”      

       “See you to-morrer,” said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter of fact, to see much of the habitable globe before he saw her again.     

       Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for a half-crown that still eluded him among the charred remains.     

       His face was grave and melancholy.     

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