" I took his place, grasping the spokes firmly, and he stood aside, watching every movement closely, as I held the speeding sloop steadily up to the wind, the spray pouring in over the dipping rail forward.

Whenever Narcissus turned his gleaming spokes along some mapped, but none the less mysterious, countyroad, he thought of Lohengrin in his barge drawn by white swans to his mystic tryst; he thought of the seven-leagued boots, the flying carpet, the wishing-cap, and the wooden Pegasus,so called because it mounted into the clouds on the turning of a peg.

The man at the helm made answer, moving the spokes mechanically.

I envy seas whereon he rides, I envy spokes of wheels Of chariots that him convey, I envy speechless hills That gaze upon his journey; How easy all can see What is forbidden utterly As heaven, unto me!

With hands gripping the spokes of the wheel, and my attention concentrated on the course ahead, I could yet notice how closely Fairfax was observing the two, with no pleasant expression in his eyes, and, forgetful that I was merely a servant, I ventured a question.

While Petrak held the spoke of the wheel with one hand, he rasped at the iron upon it with a file, cutting away the heavy manacle.

The Nigella damascena, popularly known as love-in-a-mist, was designated St. Catherine's flower, "from its persistent styles," writes Dr. Prior, "resembling the spokes of her wheel."

As if they were tracing the invisible spokes of a huge wheel laid flat and filling the valley from mountain range to mountain range, they rode out until they had reached the approximate rim of the circle.

Before he fell to the deck, he had lashed the spokes and still gripped the end of the rope in his dead hand.

This formal fool, your man, speaks nought but proverbs, And speak men what they can to him, he'll answer With some rhyme-rotten sentence or old saying, Such spokes as th'ancient of the parish use, With, "Neighbour, 'tis an old proverb and a true, Goose giblets are good meat, old sack better than new;" Then says another, "Neighbour, that is true;"

Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the other way.

For he was not only a personable person in those days, with a suggestion of devil-may-care in his air that measurably lifted the curse of his superficial foppishness, but he was putting a spoke in Prince Victor's wheel.

Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel, and swung in behind it.

In a moment the ship would have fallen off before the wind had not our hero, leaping to the wheel (even as Captain Morgan shouted an order for some one to do so), seized the flying spokes, whirling them back again, and so bringing the bow of the galleon up to its former course.

[Illustration: "OUR HERO, LEAPING TO THE WHEEL, SEIZED THE FLYING SPOKES"]

"Sometimes a tire shrinks so much as to spring the spokes out of shape.

I suppose I 'adn't been on the wharf ten minutes afore Cap'n Smithers came sidling up to me, but I got my spoke in fust.

Now Gadabout's steering-wheel was counting spokes to starboard; she headed diagonally up the river toward the northern shore, and we were soon nearing the historic island.

All of which is merely by way of stating that Miss Estella Benton was a young woman who had grown up quite complacently in that station of life in whichto quote the Philistinesit had pleased God to place her, and that Chance had somehow, to her astonished dismay, contrived to thrust a spoke in the smooth-rolling wheels of destiny.