fare he could not tell, but at length there, he came again
to an abrupt stop. Some distance ahead in the road appeared a machine,
motionless--waiting, or broken down.

Which car was it? The one containing the woman, or the other that came
after? If the former--He pressed on eagerly, yet keeping to the shadows,
alive once more to the need of caution. His heart pounded hard; he could
see a form passing in front of the machine; the light of the lamp
enabled him now to make out the other occupants--three men. No woman was
with them. This became poignantly, irrefutably evident as he drew
nearer. He could see plainly the empty car and the trio of figures; he
could hear them talking but was not yet able to distinguish what they
said. These were the people whose attention he had tried to attract back
there in the road. His purpose then, occurring to him in a flash,
renewed itself strongly now. He would ask their aid; circumstances might
enable him to do so now with better grace. He had had a good deal of
experience with cars of divers kinds and makes at different times in the
past. Why not proffer these strangers his fairly expert services? He
felt sure he could soon learn, and repair, what was wrong with the
machine. Having made himself useful, he could then intimate that a
"lift" down the road would be acceptable. And he would probably get it.

But he did not carry out his intention. Something he heard as he came
closer to them caused him to hesitate and reconsider. Mixed with
anathemas directed against the car, of rather a cheap type, were words
that had for him more than passing significance. These men were after
some one, and that the some one was none other than himself, Mr.
Heatherbloom soon became fully convinced. Fate had been kinder to him
than he knew when he had endeavored, and failed, to win their notice. He
crouched back now against a rail fence; their low disgruntled tones were
still borne to him. For some moments they continued to work over the
machine without apparently being able to set it to rights.

"If this goes on much longer," said one of them, "he'll get away from
Brownville."

"Providin' he's there!" grumbled another. "People are always seeing an
escaped criminal in a dozen different localities at the same time."

Brownville! The listener soon divined, from a sentence dropped here and
there, that the place was a little fishing village a short distance down
the coast. He surmised, also, that they had