Mr Hawkins Humorous Adventures | Page 4

the attractive little frill Maud might add to her performance by
kicking a dozen or two of the milk cans into the river as she passed.
Maud, however, as she approached the cans, kept fairly in the middle of
the road--and stopped!
Heavens! She stopped so short that I gasped for breath. All in a

twinkling the steel rods dropped into position beside her legs, the cuffs
snapped, and the Hawkins Horse-brake had worked at last!
Poor old Maud! She slid a few yards with rigid limbs, squealing in
terror, and then crashed to the ground like an overturned toy horse.
Hawkins shot off into space, and at the moment I didn't care greatly
where he landed. I was vaguely conscious that he collided head-on with
the row of milk-cans, but my main anxiety was to shut off my power,
set the brake, point the auto into the ditch, and jump.
And I did it all in about one second.
After the jump, my recollection grows hazy. I know that one of my feet
landed in an open milk-can, and that I grabbed wildly at several others.
Then the cans and I toppled headlong over the embankment and went
down, down, down, while, fainter and fainter, I could hear something
like:
"Whoa! Whoa! Gol darn ye! Ow! Stop that hoss! Bang! Rattle! Rattle!
Bang! Whoa! Stop, can't ye?"
Then a peculiarly unyielding milk-can landed on my head and I seemed
to float away.
I have reason to believe that I sat up about two minutes later. The crash
was over and peace had settled once more upon the face of nature.
From far away came the sound of galloping hoofs, belonging, no doubt,
to some of the horses who had participated in the late excitement.
The embankment was strewn with men and milk-cans, chiefly the latter.
No one seemed to be wholly dead, although one or two looked pretty
near it.
A few feet away, Burkett, the constable, was having a convulsion in his
vain endeavour to extricate his cranium from a milk-can. The sounds
that issued from that can made me blush.

Jackson was sitting up and staring dully at the river, while Dr.
Brotherton, with his frock-coat split to the collar, was fishing fragments
of his medicine case out of another can.
Others of the erstwhile procession were distributed about the
embankment in various conditions, but, as I have said, nobody seemed
to have parted company with the vital spark.
Hawkins alone was invisible, and as I struggled to my feet this fact
puzzled me considerably.
A pile of milk-cans balanced on the river's edge, and on the chance of
finding the inventor's remains, I tipped them into the stream.
Underneath, stretched on the cold, unsympathetic ground, his feet
dabbling idly in the water, his clothes in a hundred shreds, a great lump
on his brow, was Hawkins, stunned and bleeding!
As I turned to summon Brotherton, Hawkins opened his eyes.
I am not one to cherish a grudge. I felt that Hawkins' invention had
been its own terrible punishment. So I helped him to his feet as gently
as possible, and waited for apologetic utterances.
"You see, Griggs," began Hawkins, uncertainly--"you see, the--the
ratchet on the big wheel--stuck. I'll put a new--a new ratchet there, and
oil-- lots of oil--on the--the----"
"That's enough, Hawkins," I said.
"Come home."
"Yes, but don't you see," he groaned, holding fast to his battered skull
as I helped him back to the road, "if I get that one little point
perfected--it--it will revol----"
"Let it!" I snapped. "Sit here until I see what's left of my automobile."
Ten minutes later, Patrick having appeared to take charge of Maud S.,
Hawkins and I were making our homeward way in the runabout, which

had mercifully been spared.
Something in my face must have forbidden conversation, for Hawkins
wrapped the soiled fragments of his raiment about him in offended
dignity, and was silent on the subject of horse-brake.
Nor have I ever heard of the thing since. Possibly Mrs. Hawkins
succeeded in demonstrating the fallacy of the whole horse-brake theory;
in fact, from the expression on her face when we reached the house, I
am inclined to think that she did.
Mrs. Hawkins can be strong-minded on occasion, and her tongue is in
no way inadequate to the needs of her mind. At any rate, a friend of
mine in the patent office, whom I asked about the matter some time ago,
tells, me that the Hawkins Horse-brake has never been patented, so that
I presume the invention is in its grave. As a public spirited citizen, I
venture to add that this is a blessing.

CHAPTER II.
My wife is averse to widowhood. Lately she exacted my solemn pledge
not to assist Hawkins with any