“What is your name?” I said to her.

“Jane, please,” said she.

“Jane what?” said I.

“Jane Puddle, please,” said she.

I took a carving-knife from off the table, and standing over her I brought it down gently on top of her head.  “Rise, Sir Jane Puddle,” said I, to which the maid gave a smothered gasp, and—­would you believe it, madam?—­she crept out of the room on her hands and knees.  The cook waited on us at breakfast, and I truly believe that the landlord and his wife breathed a sigh of relief when we left the Ship Inn, for their sordid souls had never heard of knighthood, but knew all about assassination.

[Illustration:  “Rise, Sir Jane Puddle”]

That morning we left Porlock by a hill which compared with the one we came into it by, was like the biggest Pyramid of Egypt by the side of a haycock.  I don’t suppose in the whole civilized world there is a worse hill with a road on it than the one we went up by.  I was glad we had to go up it instead of down it, though it was very hard to walk, pushing the tricycle, even when helped.  I believe it would have taken away my breath and turned me dizzy even to take one step face forward down such a hill, and gaze into the dreadful depths below me; and yet they drive coaches and fours down that hill.  At the top of the hill is this notice:  “To cyclers—­this hill is dangerous.”  If I had thought of it I should have looked for the cyclers’ graves at the bottom of it.

The reason I thought about this was that I had been reading about one of the mountains in Switzerland, which is one of the highest and most dangerous, and with the poorest view, where so many Alpine climbers have been killed that there is a little graveyard nearly full of their graves at the foot of the mountain.  How they could walk through that graveyard and read the inscriptions on the tombstones and then go and climb that mountain is more than I can imagine.

In walking up this hill, and thinking that it might have been in front of me when my tricycle ran away, I could not keep my mind away from the little graveyard at the foot of the Swiss mountain.

Letter Number Eleven

[Illustration]

CHEDCOMBE, SOMERSETSHIRE

On the third day of our cycle trip we journeyed along a lofty road, with the wild moor on one side and the tossing sea on the other, and at night reached Lynton.  It is a little town on a jutting crag, and far down below it on the edge of the sea was another town named Lynmouth, and there is a car with a wire rope to it, like an elevator, which they call The Lift, which takes people up and down from one town to another.