I had asked Jone and Mr. Poplington to go ahead, because I knew I could do a great deal better if I worked along by myself for a while, without being told what I ought to do and what I oughtn't to do. There is nothing that bothers me so much as to have people try to teach me things when I am puzzling them out for myself. But now I found that although they could not be far ahead, I couldn't see them, on account of the twists in the road and the high hedges, and so I put on steam and went along at a fine rate, sniffing the breeze like a charger of the battlefield. Before very long I came to a place where the road forked, but the road to the left seemed like a lane leading to somebody's house, so I kept on in what was plainly the main road, which made a little turn where it forked. Looking out ahead of me, to see if I could catch sight of the two men, I could not see a sign of them, but I did see that I was on the top of a long hill that seemed to lead on and down and on and down, with no end to it.
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.