to stop the car, but the rails were
slippery and it was easily seen that he could not do it. Then he added
his shouts to those of the others.

"Oh, he'll be killed!" cried Alice, covering her face with her hands.
Ruth had also turned aside.

"No, he won't!" cried Russ, with conviction. "They'll get him off, I
think. There! He's free! I guess they took off his shoe."

As he spoke the girls looked, and they saw the man fall in a peculiar
way, to one side, so as to be out of the path of the car, which swept
past him. The vehicle, however, seemed to hit him, but of this neither
Russ nor the girls could be sure.

"That's a queer accident," murmured Russ, as he started toward the scene
of it. "Come on, girls."

Ruth and Alice went with him. There was a little crowd about the fallen
man, and at the sight of the fellow's face Alice suddenly cried:

"Look! That is Dan Merley!"

CHAPTER VI

NEW PLANS

Alice's announcement caused her sister to start in surprise. Ruth looked
as if she could not understand, and Alice repeated:

"See, the man who fell is Dan Merley--the one who says daddy owes him
five hundred dollars."

"I believe you're right!" agreed Russ, who had had a good look at the
impudent fellow the night he invaded the DeVere rooms. "And I know one
of those other men--at least by sight. His name is Jagle. Let's see what
is going on here."

Fortunately no very large crowd gathered, so the girls felt it would be
proper for them to remain, particularly as the accident was not of a
distressing nature.

The motorman had stopped his car and had run back to the scene with the
conductor.

"What's the matter here? What did you want to get in the way of the car
for, anyhow?" demanded the motorman. He was nervously excited, and the
reaction at finding, after all, he had not killed a man, made him rather
angry.

"Matter? Matter enough, I should say!" replied one of the men with
Merley. "My friend is badly hurt. Someone get an ambulance! Fripp, you
call one."

"That was Jagle who spoke," Russ whispered to the girls. "But I don't
know the other one."

"He doesn't seem to be badly hurt," remarked the motorman. The
conductor, with a little pad and pencil, was getting the names of
witnesses to be used in case suit was brought. This is always done by
street car companies, in order to protect themselves.

"Hurt? Of course he's hurt!" exclaimed the man Russ called Jagle. "See
that cut on his head!"

There