“Thro’out the annals of the land,
Tho’ he may hold himself the least,
That man I honour and revere,
Who, without favour, without fear,
In the great city dares to stand
The friend of every friendless beast.”
Longfellow.
“I had dismounted to light my tricycle lamps, and to ‘oil up,’ previously to accomplishing the last part of my day’s ride—a good fifteen miles, through a rough and very lonely bit of country on the borders of North Wales. I had already ridden somewhat over thirty-five miles that day, and the roads were sticky, and in many parts stony, for it was very early in the spring, and the metal that had been put down a month or two before had not yet smoothed down.
“I was not sorry, therefore, to stretch my legs a little and gaze at the sky. The sun had set about an hour before, and the heavens in the south-west were lit up with most singular beauty of tinting. There was nothing stern or harsh about the colouring—no saturnian glare, no sulphureous glow, like what was so often seen during the winter of 1883-84. High up, the sky there was of a palish blue; in that blue shone a solitary star with wonderful brilliancy. Beneath this was pale saffron-yellow. Lower down still this pure yellow melted gradually into a soft tint of carmine, while between that and the horizon was a bar of misty steel-grey.
“‘How lovely!—how inexpressibly lovely!’ I couldn’t help saying to myself, half aloud.
“‘It is indeed beautiful!’ said a voice close by my elbow that made me start and look round. ‘But it bodes no good. You couldn’t see me coming,’ he said, smiling, ‘because I was under the shadow of the hawthorn hedge; and you couldn’t hear me, because I walked on the grass.’
“‘And what did you come for?’ I inquired. ‘But stop,’ I added, before he could answer my question; ‘I have no right to ask you. The road is free to both of us.’
“‘But I’m not on a journey,’ he replied, ‘so I will answer. My house is in here, behind that hedge, though you can’t see it, and there is not another for the next ten miles. You are seventeen miles from L—, where, I presume, you are going. Had you not better come in and rest a bit? The moon rises at eight to-night.’
“‘You are really very kind,’ I said; ‘but my being so far from home makes hurry all the more necessary. I’ll light my lamps and be off.’
“‘As you please,’ he said carelessly.
“Just then I discovered, very much to my astonishment—for I pride myself on the perfectness of my outfit while on the road—that my match-box was empty.