I had hardly started down this hill when my tricycle became frisky and showed signs of wanting to run, and I got a little nervous, for I didn’t fancy going fast down a slope like that.  I put on the brake, but I don’t believe I managed it right, for I seemed to go faster and faster; and then, as the machine didn’t need any working, I took my feet off the pedals, with an idea, I think, though I can’t now remember, that I would get off and walk down the hill.  In an instant that thing took the bit in its teeth and away it went wildly tearing down hill.  I never was so much frightened in all my life.  I tried to get my feet back on the pedals, but I couldn’t do it, and all I could do was to keep that flying tricycle in the middle of the road.  As far as I could see ahead there was not anything in the way of a wagon or a carriage that I could run into, but there was such a stretch of slope that it made me fairly dizzy.  Just as I was having a little bit of comfort from thinking there was nothing in the way, a black woolly dog jumped out into the road some distance ahead of me and stood there barking.  My heart fell, like a bucket into a well with the rope broken.  If I steered the least bit to the right or the left I believe I would have bounded over the hedge like a glass bottle from a railroad train, and come down on the other side in shivers and splinters.  If I didn’t turn I was making a bee-line for the dog; but I had no time to think what to do, and in an instant that black woolly dog faded away like a reminiscence among the buzzing wheels of my tricycle.  I felt a little bump, but was ignorant of further particulars.

I was now going at what seemed like a speed of ninety or a hundred miles an hour, with the wind rushing in between my teeth like water over a mill-dam, and I felt sure that if I kept on going down that hill I should soon be whirling through space like a comet.  The only way I could think of to save myself was to turn into some level place where the thing would stop, but not a crossroad did I pass; but presently I saw a little house standing back from the road, which seemed to hump itself a little at that place so as to be nearly level, and over the edge of the hump it dipped so suddenly that I could not see the rest of the road at all.

“Now,” thought I to myself, “if the gate of that house is open I’ll turn into it, and no matter what I run into, it would be better than going over the edge of that rise beyond and down the awful hill that must be on the other side of it.”  As I swooped down to the little house and reached the level ground I felt I was going a little slower, but not much.  However, I steered my tricycle round at just the right instant, and through the front gate I went like a flash.