an oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces
of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his
skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had obviously been
smashed.

The men of the same rank as himself in the office, captains and first
lieutenants of business, said that he "simply ate up work." They
fancied, with the eager old-womanishness of office gossip, that he had
a "secret sorrow," for, though he was pleasant enough, he kept very
much to himself. The cause of his retirement from aviation was the
theme of many romantic legends. They did not know precisely what it
was he had done in the pre-historic period of a year before, but they
treated him with reverence instead of the amused aloofness with which
an office usually waits to see whether a new man will prove to be a
fool or a "grouch," a clown or a good fellow. The stenographers and
filing-girls and telephone-girls followed with yearning eyes the
hero's straight back. The girl who discovered, in an old _New York
Chronicle_ lining a bureau drawer, an interview with Carl, became very
haughty over its possession and lent it only to her best lady friends.
The older women, who knew that Carl had had a serious accident,
whispered in cloak-room confidences, "Poor fellow, and so brave about
it."

Yet all the while Carl's china-blue eyes showed no trace of pain nor
sorrow nor that detestable appeal for sympathy called "being brave
about his troubles."

* * * * *

There were many thoughtful features which fitted the Touricar for use
in camping--extra-sized baggage-box whose triangular shape made the
car more nearly streamline, special folding silk tents, folding
aluminum cooking-utensils, electric stove run by current from the car,
electric-battery light attached to a curtain-rod. But the distinctive
feature, the one which Carl could patent, was the means by which a bed
was made up inside the car as Pullman seats are turned into berths.
The back of the front seat was hinged, and dropped back to horizontal.
The upholstery back of the back seat could be taken out and also
placed on the horizontal. With blankets spread on the level space thus
provided, with the extra-heavy top and side curtains in place, and the
electric light switched on, tourists had a refuge cleaner than a
country hotel and safer than a tent....

The first Touricar was being built. Carl was circularizing a list of
possible purchasers, and c