Fifteen miles of scorching over country roads sufficed to bring him to a calmer mood, and he turned his wheel towards the Sykes homestead once more.  The motif was still as far beyond his grasp as ever; but there were other things in life besides elusive motifs.  The increasing blackness above his head was one of them; his hunger was another, and he quickened his pace.  His piano might be awaiting him in mute reproach; but then, so did Eulaly’s doughnuts await him, and there was no reproach in those, at least, not until some time later.  He fell to whistling a strain of his overture, as he rode swiftly along, quite unconscious of the fact that disaster, in the person of Miss Phebe McAlister, was riding quite as swiftly to meet him.

Three miles from his boarding-place, the storm overtook him with a rush which straight-way reduced the roads to the consistency of cream.  He looked about for shelter; but no shelter was at hand, and the road meandered along before him uphill and down again with an easy nonchalance which appeared to take no account of the pelting rain.  It was hard riding and dangerous, but he pushed on manfully, while the streams of water trickled down his neck and along the bridge of his nose.  As he reached the crest of the hill, he saw before him, just crawling over the crest of the opposite hill, a figure on a bicycle coming swiftly towards him.  Even at that distance, he could make out a bedraggled white suit, a limp sailor hat and a vast pulpy bundle lashed to the handle-bars.

“Some country maiden, coming home from market,” he said to himself.  “I Hope she is enjoying the shower.”

Then of a sudden, he braced himself for a shock, for a bell was clanging wildly, and a cry rang out upon his ears,—­

“Oh, go away!  Be careful!  Get out of the way!  Quick!”

He turned aside, out of the path of the flying wheel.  It sounds a cowardly thing to have done, and doubtless the knights of old would have contrived a way of rescue.  To the latter-day knight, however, there was something inevitable in the on-coming of the wheel, with its rider’s feet kicking in a futile search for the pedals.  It reminded him of his own futile search for his motif.  Both searchers seemed equally helpless to attain their objects.  Moreover, when a tall and muscular maiden sweeps down upon one, leaving behind her a train of shrieks and scattered phalanges, there is absolutely nothing for one to do but to get out of her way as expeditiously as possible.  No use in breaking two necks, and—­the critics were waiting for the symphonic poem.

He turned, then, to the right-hand edge of the road.  Phebe was bouncing along over the stones dangerously near the other gutter, and he already was congratulating himself upon his escape.  Then in a moment the situation was changed.  The runaway wheel flashed into a mud puddle, veered and before his astonished eyes shed a rib or two and a clavicle from the swaying bundle, veered again and collided with his own wheel.  In another instant, the right-hand gutter held two muddy bicycles, the greater portion of a human skeleton, Phebe McAlister and the composer of the Alan Breck Overture.