reached obediently inside his coat. Mert growled
inaudible comments upon Bud's nerve.

"Oh, we can't kick, Mert," Foster smoothed him down diplomatically.
"He's delivered the goods, so far. And he certainly does know how to put
a car over the road. He don't know us, remember!"

Mert grunted again and subsided. Foster extracted a bank note from his
bill-folder, which Bud observed had a prosperous plumpness, and held it
out to Bud.

"I guess fifty dollars won't hurt your feelings, will it, brother?
That's more than you'd charge for twice the trip, but we appreciate a
tight mouth, and the hurry-up trip you've made of it, and all that It's
special work, and we're willing to pay a special price. See?"

"Sure. But I only want half, right now. Maybe," he added with the
lurking twinkle in his eyes, "I won't suit yuh quite so well the rest
of the way. I'll have to go b'-guess and b'-gosh from here on. I've got
some change left from what I bought for yuh this morning too. Wait till
I check up."

Very precisely he did so, and accepted enough from Foster to make up
the amount to twenty-five dollars. He was tempted to take more. For
one minute he even contemplated holding the two up and taking enough to
salve his hurt pride and his endangered reputation. But he did not do
anything of the sort, of course; let's believe he was too honest to do
it even in revenge for the scurvy trick they had played him.

He ate a generous lunch of sandwiches and dill pickles and a wedge of
tasteless cocoanut cake, and drank half a pint or so of the hot, black
coffee, and felt more cheerful.

"Want to get down and stretch your legs? I've got to take a look at the
tires, anyway. Thought she was riding like one was kinda flat, the last
few miles."

They climbed out stiffly into the rain, stood around the car and stared
at it and at Bud testing his tires, and walked off down the road for a
little distance where they stood talking earnestly together. From the
corner of his eye Bud caught Mert tilting his head that way, and smiled
to himself. Of course they were talking about him! Any fool would know
that much. Also they were discussing the best means of getting rid of
him, or of saddling upon him the crime of stealing the car, or some
other angle at which he touched their problem.

Under cover of testing the rear wheel farthest from them, he peeked into
the tonneau and took a good look at the small traveling bag they had
kept on the seat betwee