we've been settin' down to rest!
Out our way if a lynchin' party didn't move faster than we've done so
fur, the center of attraction would die on the road of old age. Now, my
heroic college chum,' he goes on, callin' me out of my name as usual,
'will you be so condescendin' as to indicate how we hit the trail?'

"Hit--hit which? Don't hit nothin', for goodness' sake! Goin' the way we
be, it would----'

"'Which way do we go?'

"'Right straight ahead. Keep on the ocean side, 'cause there's more hard
sand there, and--hold on! Don't do that! Stop it, I tell you!'

"Them was the last rememberable words said by me durin' the next quarter
of an hour. That shover man let out a hair-raisin' yell, hauled the
nickel marlinespike over in its rack, and squeezed a rubber bag that
was spliced to the steerin'-wheel. There was a half dozen toots or howls
or honks from under our bows somewheres, and then that automobile hopped
off the ground and commenced to fly. The fust hop landed me on my knees
in the cockpit, and there I stayed. 'Twas the most fittin' position fur
my frame of mind and chimed in fust-rate with the general religious
drift of my thoughts.

"The Cut-through is two mile or more from Herrin' Neck. 'Cording to my
count we hit terra cotta just three times in them two miles. The fust
hit knocked my hat off. The second one chucked me up so high I looked
back for the hat, and though we was a half mile away from it, it hadn't
had time to git to the ground. And all the while the horn was a honkin',
and Billings was a screechin', and the sand was a flyin'. Sand! Why,
say! Do you see that extra bald place on the back of my head? Yes? Well,
there was a two-inch thatch of hair there afore that sand-blast ground
it off.

"When I went up on the third jounce I noticed the Cut-through just
ahead. Billings see it, too, and--would you b'lieve it?--the lunatic
stood up, let go of the wheel with one hand, takes off his hat and waves
it, and we charge down across them wet tide flats like death on the
woolly horse, in Scriptur'.

"'Hi, yah! Yip!' whoops Billings. 'Come on in, fellers! The water's
fine! Yow! Y-e-e-e! Yip!'

[Illustration: "FOR A SECOND IT LEFT OFF RAININ' SAND, AND THERE WAS A
TYPHOON OF MUD AND SPRAY"]

"For a second it left off rainin' sand, and there was a typhoon of mud
and spray. I see a million of the prettiest rainbows--that is, I
cal'lated there was a million; it's awful hard to count when you're
bouncin' an