"I'm a-looking at you, Joe," said Mr. Blows, waggishly. "I can see you."
Mr. Carter looked up sharply and, catching sight of the grinning features of Mr. Blows protruding over the edge of the straw, threw up his arms with a piercing shriek and fell off the shafts on to the road. The astounded Mr. Blows, raising himself on his hands, saw him pick himself up and, giving vent to a series of fearsome yelps, run clumsily back along the road.
"Joe!" shouted Mr. Blows. "J-o-o-oE!"
Mr. Carter put his hands to his ears and ran on blindly, while his friend, sitting on the top of the straw, regarded his proceedings with mixed feelings of surprise and indignation.
"It can't be that tanner 'e owes me," he mused, "and yet I don't know what else it can be. I never see a man so jumpy."
He continued to speculate while the old horse, undisturbed by the driver's absence, placidly continued its journey. A mile farther, however, he got down to take the short cut by the fields.
"If Joe can't look after his 'orse and cart," he said, primly, as he watched it along the road, "it's not my business."
The footpath was not much used at that time of night, and he only met one man. They were in the shadow of the trees which fringed the new cemetery as they passed, and both peered. The stranger was satisfied first and, to Mr. Blows's growing indignation, first gave a leap backward which would not have disgraced an acrobat, and then made off across the field with hideous outcries.