After a short inspection of the ruins we proceeded, and no further incident occurred until we reached Maidenhead, where we bagged a chicken and a small spaniel. Freddy declared that their loss would not be felt and we went straight ahead. In the next village, Freddy, who resembles a blotting-pad in his capacity for absorbing liquid, stopped abruptly before the ‘Sow and Scissors’ for a reviver. After this operation, I, mindful of our victims at Maidenhead, firmly declined to mount the car again unless Freddy gave up the steering wheel to the Chauffeur; this he did, and we soon reached Slough. Shortly afterwards we entered the village of Little Pudley at thirty miles an hour, marking our passage by a slight entanglement with the village pump; however Freddy succeeded in jerking off the handle before it caught him in the wind, and so no harm was done beyond leaving a portion of our splash-board in the well. The calm of our progress through Hounslow and Chiswick was unbroken, and I was wiping the dust from my eyes preparatory to a gentle snooze, when without any warning except a violent shock, which threw my hat into the neighbouring gutter, the car stopped abruptly; and although we tried each of the handles in turn and subsequently all together, the sparrow-starver remained motionless. Frederick then spoke. When the air had cleared we discovered that the Chauffeur was again seeking the seclusion of his beloved petrol tank, but reappeared with astonishing rapidity just in time to avoid a shower of greasy black liquid which spread itself about the pavement. Freddy shrieked ‘jump,’ and we jumped. Immediately afterwards the car, groaning hideously, made with fearful speed for a saddler’s shop, and was only prevented from entering by an opportune collision with a lamp-post. This appeared to annoy the death-trap, for it blew out its bonnet and then reclined peacefully against a metropolitan water-trough, from which all efforts to move it were unavailing.