Mr. Puddlebox settled his back against the seat, and cocking a very merry eye at Mr. Wriford, chanted with enormous fervour: "O ye motors of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever." CHAPTER VIII FIRST PERSON EXTRAORDINARY "Well--" said Mr. Wriford to himself. There is to be added here, as bringing Mr. Wriford to this exclamation, that at midday the chauffeur, having whirled through rural England at great speed for some hours on end, again drew up at a roadside inn no less isolated than that at which he had first accommodated his passengers, and had no sooner repaired within than Mr. Puddlebox, first protruding a cautious head and finding no soul in sight, then led out the way through the further door and then up the road until a friendly hedgeside invited them to rest and to the various foods which Mr. Puddlebox had brought from the farm and now produced from his pockets. Mr. Wriford ate in silence, and nothing that Mr. Puddlebox could say could fetch him from his thoughts. "Well," thought Mr. Wriford, "this is the most extraordinary state of affairs! A week ago I was an editor in London and afraid of everything and everybody. Now I've been in the river, and I've stolen a ride in a wagon, and I've had a devil of a fight with a wagoner, and I've kicked a policeman head over heels bang into a ditch, and I've nearly been burnt alive, and I've broken out through the roof of a barn and fallen a frightful buster off it, and I've slung a chap into a pond, and I've nearly killed a chap and half-drowned him in milk, and I've nailed a man to the floor by his nightshirt, and I've jumped out of a high window and been chased for my life, and I've stolen a ride in a motor-car, and where the devil I am now I haven't the remotest idea. Well, it's the most extraordinary--!" BOOK THREE ONE OF THE FRIGHTENED ONES CHAPTER I BODY WORK I It was in early May that Mr. Wriford cast himself into the river. Declining Summer, sullied in her raiment by September's hand, slain by October's, found him still in Mr. Puddlebox's company. But a different Wriford from him whom that jolly gentleman had first met upon the road from Barnet. In body a harder man, what of the open life, the mad adventures, and of the casual work--all manual work--in farm and field that supplied their necessaries when these ran short. And harder man in soul. "You're a confirmed rascal, sir," addressed him the chairman of a Bench of country magistrates before whom--and not their first experience of such--he and Mr. Puddlebox once were haled, their offence that they had been found sleeping in the outbuildings of a rural parsonage. The rector, a gentleman, appearing unwillingly to prosecute, pleaded for the prisoners. A trivial offence, he urged--a stormy night on which he would gladly have given them shelter had they asked for it, and he turned to the dock with: "Why did you not come and ask for it, my friend?"