was over and peace had settled once more upon the face of nature.
From far away came the sound of galloping hoofs, belonging, no doubt, to some of the horses who had participated in the late excitement.
The embankment was strewn with men and milk-cans, chiefly the latter. No one seemed to be wholly dead, although one or two looked pretty near it.
A few feet away, Burkett, the constable, was having a convulsion in his vain endeavour to extricate his cranium from a milk-can. The sounds that issued from that can made me blush.
Jackson was sitting up and staring dully at the river, while Dr. Brotherton, with his frock-coat split to the collar, was fishing fragments of his medicine case out of another can.
Others of the erstwhile procession were distributed about the embankment in various conditions, but, as I have said, nobody seemed to have parted company with the vital spark.
Hawkins alone was invisible, and as I struggled to my feet this fact puzzled me considerably.
A pile of milk-cans balanced on the river's edge, and on the chance of finding the inventor's remains, I tipped them into the stream. Underneath, stretched on the cold, unsympathetic ground, his feet dabbling idly in the water, his clothes in a hundred shreds, a great lump on his brow, was Hawkins, stunned and bleeding!
As I turned to summon Brotherton, Hawkins opened his eyes.
I am not one to cherish a grudge. I felt that Hawkins' invention had been its own terrible punishment. So I helped him to his feet as gently as possible, and waited for apologetic utterances.
“You see, Griggs,” began Hawkins, uncertainly—“you see, the—the ratchet on the big wheel—stuck. I'll put a new—a new ratchet there, and oil—lots of oil—on the—the——”
“That's enough, Hawkins,” I said.
“Come home.”
“Yes, but don't you see,” he groaned, holding fast to his battered skull as I helped him back to the road, “if I get that one little point
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