ive dollars and even more, depending on how much milk
given daily. When back on the road again, having but bent a mud guard
against a fense, I was calmer.

"How do I know you will bring it back?" I asked, stareing at him
fixedly.

"Oh, now see here," he said, straightening his necktie, "I may be a
Theif, but I am not that kind of a Theif. I play for big stakes or
nothing."

I then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that
mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and father's
pearl studs et cetera. I turned pale, but he did not notice it, being
busy counting out Twenty-five dollars in small bills.

I am one to think quickly, but with precicion. So I said:

"You can't drive, can you?"

"I do drive, dear Little--I beg your pardon. And I think, with a lesson
now, I could get along. Now see here, Twenty-five dollars while you are
asleep and therfore not gilty if I take your car from wherever you
keep it. I'll leave it at the station and you'll find it there in the
morning."

Is it surprizing that I agreed and that I took the filthy lucre? No. For
I knew then that he would never get to the station, and the reward of
two hundred, plus the Twenty-five, was already mine mentaly.

He learned to drive the Arab in but a short time, and I took him to
the shed and showed him where I hid the key. He said he had never heard
before of a girl owning a Motor and her parents not knowing, and while
we were talking there Tom Gray went by in the station hack and droped
somthing in the road.

When I went out to look IT WAS THE KEY RING I HAD GIVEN HIM.

I knew then that all was over and that I was doomed to a single life,
growing more and more meloncholy until Death releived my sufferings. For
I am of a proud nature, to proud to go to him and explain. If he was one
to judge me by apearances I was through. But I ached. Oh, how I ached!

The Theif did not go further that day, but returned to the station. And
I? I was not idle, beleive me. During the remainder of the day, although
a broken thing, I experamented to find exactly how much gas it took to
take the car from the station to our house. As I could not go to the
house I had to guess partly, but I have a good mind for estimations, and
I found that two quarts would do it.

So he could come to the house or nearby, but he could not get away with
his ill-gotten gains. I therfore returned to my home and ate a nursery
supper, and Hannah came in an