The road stretched before O'Mara, silvered in the moonlight, shadowed here and there by the groups of tall trees. He put his foot down on the accelerator, saw the speedometer mount up over sixty miles an hour.
He sat behind the wheel, the wind blowing through his hair, enjoying the speed. He kept the car between fifty and seventy miles an hour for nearly ten miles, decelerating only slightly for the wide curves; taking the sharper turns on the brakes.
Then he slowed down. He stopped the car in a patch of shadow, fumbled in his pocket for one of the small cigars. He lit it, sat enjoying the night, congratulating himself that nearly ten months of bad liquor and a worse diet had not affected his driving nerve.
He restarted the car. Two miles farther he took the left fork on to the subsidia
