H.E. Bates Companion

Uncle Silas, calling the bluff of an inveterate boaster, beats him in a five-mile race through trickery.  In the closing line, Silas remarks to him:  "I know you ain't a reading man. But some day you ought to read about a race between the tortoise and the hare." A television adaptation starring Albert Finney was aired in 2003. The story later appeared in a volume called The British Inn (1950) and, with the title "My Uncle the Tortoise," in Argosy (June 1943). In My Uncle Silas (1939).