Before midnight, Mr. Hoopdriver was sleeping peacefully in the small, plain bedroom at the top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern.
His blinds were closed, and the room was completely dark.
For the first few hours, he slept deeply.
Then the dreams began.
After your first long day on a bicycle, there is a strange kind of dream that seems almost unavoidable.
Your legs remember the movement.
Even when you are asleep, they seem to keep pedaling.
In the dream, you ride through a strange world on bicycles that keep changing shape and size.
You race down church towers and staircases.
You fly over cliffs.
You hang helplessly above towns, desperately searching for a brake that you cannot find.
You plunge into rivers and charge toward enormous obstacles.
Mr. Hoopdriver soon found himself riding out of complete darkness.
He was pedaling a pair of enormous, magical wheels across the Surrey countryside.
The wheels bounced over hills and crashed straight through villages.
Behind him, the other man in brown was shouting furiously.
“Stop! Stop, you fool!”
The heath-keeper from Putney Heath was there too.
So was the angry man in the drab cycling suit.
They were all yelling at him.
Hoopdriver felt like the biggest fool alive.
“What am I?” he wondered.
“A juggins!”
Then, somehow, the word changed in his mind.
“A Juggernaut!”
The bicycle continued forward.
One village after another disappeared beneath his wheels with a strange, soft crunch.
But he could not see the Young Lady in Grey.
He somehow knew she was behind him, watching his back.
He was terrified to turn around.
Where was the brake?
He searched desperately for it.
“It must have fallen off!”
And where was the bell?
Then he saw Guildford directly ahead.
He tried to shout a warning.
“Get out of the way!”
But no sound came from his mouth.
The town grew closer.
Closer.
Closer.
He was heading straight toward it.
The houses began cracking apart like nuts beneath his wheels.
People ran screaming through the streets.
And then, right beneath him, he suddenly saw the Young Lady in Grey.
Horror seized him.
He tried to jump off the bicycle.
But he had forgotten how high above the ground he was.
He threw himself sideways.
And began to fall.
Down he went.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Mr. Hoopdriver suddenly woke.
He turned over in bed and looked toward the window.
A thin new moon was visible through the darkness.
He lay there for a moment, wondering what had happened.
Then he fell asleep again.
His second dream somehow grew out of the first.
The other man in brown appeared once more.
He came toward Hoopdriver, shouting angrily.
The closer he came, the uglier and more frightening his face became.
Finally, he leaned right into Hoopdriver’s face.
Then he suddenly moved away until he seemed impossibly far off.
His face glowed strangely in the darkness.
“Miss Beaumont,” he said.
At once, fireworks began exploding inside the shop.
Catherine wheels spun everywhere.
Hoopdriver knew perfectly well that fireworks were forbidden in the shop, but apparently nobody cared.
Then he realized something even stranger.
The place was no longer an ordinary shop.
It was enormous.
And the other man in brown was now the shop-walker.
Unlike any real shop-walker, he seemed to be glowing from inside like a Chinese lantern.
And the customer waiting for Hoopdriver was the Young Lady in Grey.
For some reason, he had not noticed her until now.
She was dressed in grey as usual.
Her bicycle was leaning against the counter.
She smiled at him just as she had smiled when she apologized after their accident.
As she leaned toward him, Hoopdriver suddenly noticed how graceful she looked.
“What can I have the pleasure of showing you?” he asked.
“The Ripley road,” she replied.
So Hoopdriver found the Ripley road and spread it out across the counter.
She looked at it carefully.
“That will do very nicely.”
She kept smiling at him.
Hoopdriver took out a measuring stick and began measuring the road.
Eight miles.
He had somehow decided that eight miles was exactly the right length for a dress.
A rational dress, naturally.
Then the other man in brown came over.
“Move aside,” he said.
Hoopdriver continued measuring.
“You’re much too slow,” the man complained.
Hoopdriver began measuring faster.
“The Young Lady has been here long enough,” the man said.
Then he added:
“I’m her brother.”
With that, he suddenly put his arm around her waist and dragged her away.
Even in the middle of the dream, Hoopdriver thought this was rather strange behavior for a brother.
“That doesn’t look very brotherly,” he thought.
The sight of the man holding her so familiarly made Hoopdriver furious.
He jumped over the counter and ran after them.
They raced around the enormous shop.
Then they ran up an iron staircase.
At the top, they somehow found themselves outside the Keep.
From there, they rushed onto the Ripley road.
The chase continued endlessly.
They kept running in and out of a roadside inn that seemed to have two front doors and a large courtyard.
The other man could not run very fast because he was dragging the Young Lady in Grey along with him.
But Hoopdriver had an even worse problem.
His legs would not work properly.
They refused to stretch out.
Instead, they kept moving around and around as though they were still turning bicycle pedals.
He could only take tiny little steps.
He chased them anyway.
The dream seemed to have no end.
All sorts of people kept getting in his way.
The heath-keeper appeared.
Shop assistants appeared.
Policemen appeared.
The old man from the Keep appeared.
The angry cyclist in drab appeared.
The barmaid from the Unicorn appeared.
Men carrying flying machines appeared.
People playing billiards stood in doorways.
There were even ridiculous, headless figures wandering around.
Cocks and hens struggled through the crowd carrying umbrellas, parcels, and raincoats.
Other people walked around holding bedroom candles.
Everyone seemed determined to get in Hoopdriver’s way.
He desperately rang his bicycle bell.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!”
But no matter how loudly he rang or how fast he tried to run, the chase simply went on and on.