a broad foot path through
the woods, so narrow that no machine could follow him, and of course there
was no chance of catching him on foot.

"He got away from us!" cried Grace, voicing a rather self-evident fact.

"I'm afraid so, miss," said the man, and he seemed so genuinely
disappointed that they looked at him gratefully. "The man must be rather
much of a dare-devil, your criminal," he added, eyeing the bumpy path
thoughtfully. "An ordinary rider wouldn't be able to go two yards along
that path without coming to grief."

"Do you know where this path leads to?" asked Betty, struck with a sudden
inspiration. "If there's another road we might circle round and head him
off."

"Sorry, miss," he said, "but the road that path leads to is nothing but a
wagon road, and we'd have to go several miles before we'd cross it. And
the chances are," he added, "that the fellow would double back upon
himself and we'd have the run for nothing."

Betty shook her head resignedly, for, hard as it was to relinquish the
man, all that the chauffeur had said was founded on hard common sense and
she could see there was no alternative.

"I guess you're right," she said at last, after a pause during which the
girls had looked at her hopefully. Betty so often found a way where no one
else could that they never completely gave up hope until she herself
relinquished it.

So now they sighed and climbed soberly back into the machine.

"Where to?" inquired the chauffeur, as he turned the car and headed back
the way they had come. "If you're going back to the camp," he suggested,
"I can take you there. Or anywhere you say."

"You've been awfully good," cried Betty, with real gratitude in her voice.
"But you don't have to take us away back to camp. If you will drop us at
the end of the road we can walk back." All this despite sundry vigorous
and desperate shakings of Grace's head and pantomimic pointings toward her
feet. At the conclusion of Betty's sentence she groaned, but brightened up
again at the chauffeur's response.

"It won't be any trouble," he said, "to take you all the way back to camp.
In fact"--a little shyly--"I'd like to."

"Then we'd be very, very glad to accept," said Betty cordially. "For we
have walked a long way and are rather tired."

At the gates of Camp Liberty they got out of the car, thanked the
chauffeur, and while they were hesitating whether or not to offer him
money for his trouble, the latter turned the car an