usion that my own car has the best engine
on the market. Tonight I propose to make a final test and if it succeeds
I shall have an ambulance body built on it. I know this engine; I may
almost say I have an affection for it. And it has served me well. Why, I
ask you, should I abandon it and take some new-fangled thing that would
as like as not lie down and die the minute it heard the first shell?"

"Exactly," I said with some feeling; "why should you, when you can count
on me doing it anyhow?"

She ignored that, however, and said she had fully determined to go
abroad and to get as near the Front as possible. She said also that she
had already written General Pershing, and that she expected to start the
moment his reply came.

"I told him," she observed, "that I would prefer not being assigned to
any particular part of the line, as it was my intention, though not
sacrificing the national good to it, to remain as near my nephew as
possible. Pershing is a father and I felt that he would understand."

She then prepared to take the car out, and with a feeling of desperation
Aggie and I followed her.

For some time we pursued the even tenor of our way, varied only by
Tish's observing over her shoulder: "No matter what happens, do not be
alarmed, and don't yell!"

Aggie was for getting out then, but we have always stood by Tish in an
emergency, and we could not fail her then. She had turned into a dark
lane and we were moving rapidly along it.

"When I say 'Ready!' brace yourselves for a jar," Tish admonished us.
Aggie was trembling, and she had just put a small flash of blackberry
cordial to her lips to steady herself when the machine went over the
edge of a precipice, throwing Aggie into the road and myself forward
into the front of the car.

There was complete silence for a moment. Then Aggie said in a
reproachful voice: "You didn't say 'Ready!' Tish."

Tish, however, said nothing, and in the starlight I perceived her bent
forward over the steering wheel. The car was standing on its forward end
at the time.

"Tish!" I cried. "Tish!"

She then straightened herself and put both hands over the pit of her
stomach.

"I've burst something, Lizzie," she said in a strangled tone. "My gall
bladder, probably."

She then leaned back and closed her eyes. We were greatly alarmed, as it
is unlike our brave Tish to give in until the very last, but finally she
sat erect, groaning.

"I am going back and kill that boatman,"