.
The old man withdrew. Elihu Titus appeared dimly in the background.

"Ain't she one gosh-awful crazy hellion?" he called softly to Wilbur,
and returned to the horse, whose mechanism was understandable.

The boy was left sole physician to the ailing monster. He drew a long
breath of gloating and fell upon it. For three days he lived in grimed,
greased, and oiled ecstasy, appeasing that sharp curiosity to know what
was inside of things. The first day he took down the engine bit by bit.
The clean-swept floor about the dismantled hulk was a spreading turmoil
of parts. Sharon, on cool afterthought, had conceived that his purchase
might not have suffered beyond repair, but returning to survey the
wreck, had thrown up his fat hands in a gesture of hopeless finality.

"That does settle it," he murmured. He pointed to the scattered members.
"How in time did you ever find all them fiddlements in that little
space?" Of course no one could ever put them back.

He picked up the book that had come with the car, a book falsely
pretending to elucidate its mechanism, even to minor intelligences. The
book was profuse in diagrams, and each diagram was profuse in letters
of the alphabet, but these he found uninforming. For the maker of the
car had unaccountably neglected to put A, B, or C on the parts
themselves, which rendered the diagrams but maddening puzzles. He threw
down the book, to watch the absorbed young mechanic who was frankly
puzzled but still hopeful.

"It's an autopsy," said Sharon. He fled again, in the buggy drawn by the
roan. "A fool and his money!" he called from the sagging seat.

The second day passed with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu
Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was
glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning
of what would be a letter of withering denunciation to the car's maker.

But the third day the parts were unaccountably reassembled. Elihu Titus
admitted that every one of them was put back, though he hinted they were
probably by no means where they had been. But Sharon, coming again to
the dissecting room at the day's end, was stricken with awe for the
astounding genius that had put back all those parts. He felt a gleam of
hope.

"She'd ought to go now," said the proud mechanic.

"You ought to know," said Sharon. "You been plumb into her gizzard."

"Only other thing I can think of," continued the mechanic, "mebbe she