“In Ireland,” said Mr. Dick, “the police are experts at repairing bicycles. One of the people we met last week told me that. He was an inspector of something, and was always going about the country, so he’d be sure to know.”
“In any case,” said Mr. Sanders, “there isn’t likely to be a police barrack about here. There are no houses. We haven’t passed a single human habitation for the last twenty minutes.”
Mr. Dick overruled this objection at once. He had been studying the Irish question for a whole fortnight, and he thoroughly understood the country.
“In Ireland,” he said, “the most likely place to find a police barrack is where there are no houses. The reason for that is that the uninhabited districts of the country are those from which the people have been evicted. They naturally want to get back again, and so police barracks are built to prevent them doing so. You will always find a barrack where there are no people. A man who was greatly interested in the land question told me that the day before yesterday.”
“I think,” said Mr. Sanders, “that I’ll sit down here and wait till the cars overtake me. You can take your own bicycle and go on if you like.”
“You’d better not, because the cars may never overtake you. We may be on the wrong road altogether. I didn’t ask the way. I simply steered a course by the sun like an explorer in central Africa.”
“What an ass you are, Dick!”
“Not an ass, Sanders, not an ass, an adventurer. I love risk for its own sake. The blood of the ancient Bersekers is in my veins. I feel like the man in the song ‘Fiddle and I,’ that is to say, in this case,
‘Biky and I
Wandering by
Over the world together.’
If you don’t come on with me, Sanders, you will get lost like a babe in the wood, and then