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a pocket bulging with spare cartridges. As soon as he was out of ammunition he was done for – and so was his obscurely glimpsed confederate. If David could have been sure that the last shot had been already fired, he would quite confidently have stood in his tracks now.
    His conviction of this was surprising. After all, it would still be two to one, and he wasn’t himself a particular star in a rough house. But it did quite unchallengeably come to him that he would get enormous satisfaction from turning round and doing his best to lay out the two of them. He was still bolting – but at this new thought he felt blood going to his head. And once more the thought turned into pictures. He saw himself deftly dealing with his pursuers so that they went down writhing and howling. This vision was so satisfactory – particularly as coming after the others – that it must have usurped upon reality for some seconds. When David, still running, returned to a proper awareness of his actual surroundings, it was to find his situation transformed. Straight in front of him on the narrow road stood a stationary car.
    It was odd that he hadn’t seen it sooner; and odd that, whether approaching or already arrived, it hadn’t been visible from the summit of the Tor. But at once he saw the explanation. The track took a sharp dip here and ran for some fifteen yards between steep banks. The result was a particularly sheltered spot, which made a pleasant trap for the mild noon warmth. And the single occupant of the car – it was a large open car – seemed to be making the most of this. It was a young woman. She was reclining lengthwise on the front seat and contentedly eating a sandwich, while at the same time exposing to the gentle influence of the sunshine a generous stretch of bare legs which were already unseasonably brown. It wasn’t exactly an elegant spectacle; but even in his extremely preoccupied situation David was faintly aware of it as a pleasing one.
    The girl turned her head and stared at him. That was natural. Pounding down this lonely track in a state of near exhaustion, he must be a puzzling, if not positively an alarming spectacle. But what on earth was he to do? This hadn’t been one of the imaginary situations lately mirroring themselves in his mind. It contained quite a new element, which it took him only a second to identify. He himself wasn’t merely in danger; he was dangerous. In this isolated place, and with those two thugs still after him, he just wasn’t healthy to associate with. If the young woman had been a young man – or even an infant like Pettifor’s bearded nephew, Ogg – it would be different. It would be fair enough to make another chap take his chance. But you couldn’t very well ask a girl to join you as a target even for the silliest little pistol. It wouldn’t be the thing at all.
    As David was revolving these commonplace chivalric notions the girl rapidly withdrew her legs from view and then spoke. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
    It was a comically incongruous question – the kind with which somebody advances upon you in a shop. Not that the girl seemed out of a shop; she was what David with his large and innocent social assumptions thought of as an ordinary sort of girl – meaning the sort he commonly met. Well, he had met this one; she had uttered; and there was one plain point that must be decided in a split second. Either he must say ‘Yes’ and stop, or ‘No’ and run on. He could hear no sound behind him at the moment, but in no time his pursuers would be on the road and almost within range again. There certainly wasn’t leisure for what could be called conversation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m quite all right.’ And he ran on.
    The thugs wouldn’t, he supposed, sock her as they passed. At least she had a better chance of being left entirely out of it than if he had started explanations and asked her to drive him to the nearest town. But here, he saw, had been a problem that