---"

"Three!" yelled Mayer. "To the bridge!"

By mere good luck the highway was empty, for to think that any cart or
carriage could be passed was absurd. Side by side the huge machines,
scarlet, green, alive with shining brass, tore along with the roar of
express trains between the ditch and the bank. The slightest swerve at
such speed meant death. The chatter of the careless girls dwindled,
the faces of the rival drivers grew pale and tense.

"Oh, be careful!" murmured Miss Herron. "It's very dangerous."

"Very," replied Archie. "Promise me Lucy and I'll slow up."

A sudden little shriek of joy and some handclapping from Mayer's
tonneau interrupted what the old lady might have answered. Glancing
over, Miss Herron perceived that their rival had drawn ahead a yard or
more, that the girls were crying taunts at her. Not far away now there
showed a gleam of the river. And then Archie encountered the greatest
surprise of his life.

"Saucy things!" remarked his passenger, and fell silent again.

"Come on!" called the prettiest of the three, through her hollowed
hands. "Old freight car!"

"Archie!"

"Yes, Miss Herron?"

"Can't you---- Oh!"

"What, ma'am?" From the tail of his eye he was aware that Miss Agatha
was wringing her hands.

"Archie, they _mustn't_ beat us!"

"I guess I'll crowd him."

"Oh!"

The time was ripe, he thought. "Give me Lucy," he repeated, doggedly,
"or I'll foul him."

He had expected to frighten her. He had told himself what fun it would
be to hear her give her agitated assent, with the fear of death on her
if she refused. It was to be a fine revenge. But Miss Herron only
raised a warning forefinger.

"Archie Fraser," she said, in trembling tones, "if--if you take the
dust from those common young women and that vulgar man, I'll never
forgive you."

"Great heavens, Miss Herron! I--I----"

"_Beat 'em!_" she ordered truculently.

He stuck blindly to his point: "Lucy?"

"_Beat 'em!_ Show me," she declaimed, in trumpet tones, "that the man
who wants to marry a Herron has some courage in him. Now!"

The road narrowed just ahead, where it led through a cut in the hill
and then down to the bridge. On either side the banks rose eight or
ten feet, and very steep, and beyond was a sharp curve. Archie made
his horn speak angrily, as once more he came abreast of his rival,
favored by the fact that Mayer had struck a strip of newly repaired
and soft roadway some yards long. A second lat