noon
stroll on the street in the pleasant spring sunshine.

The motorman, who occupied a grand-stand seat in the rear, seemed to
have lost control of the automobile. He was excitedly fumbling with his
levers, but without being able to bring the carriage to a stop.

The street was crowded with people at the time, and when the electric
carriage began to cut its eccentric capers there was a rush for places
of safety, while the air was filled with excited cries and exclamations.

Merriwell could see the head of a passenger, a man, through the window
of the automobile.

"She's cuc-coming this way again!" shouted Gamp. "Look out, fellows!"

The front tires struck the curbing with such force that the motorman was
pitched from his high seat, landing heavily on his head in the gutter.

Bruce Browning was one of the first to reach him.

"Give him air!" Bruce commanded, lifting the man in his arms and
stepping toward a drug-store on the corner.

Some of the crowd streamed after Browning, but by far the greater number
remained to watch the antics of the automobile.

The man inside was fumbling at the door and trying to get out. The
misguided auto climbed the curbing and tried to butt down the wall of a
store building.

"Give it some climbin'-irons!" yelled a newsboy.

The automobile, with its front wheels pressed against the wall, began to
rear up like a great black bug, determined apparently to scale the
perpendicular side of the building and enter through one of the open
windows above. As soon as he saw the motorman pitched into the gutter,
Merriwell moved toward the carriage.

"Time to take a hand in this!" was his thought. "There will be more
hurt, if I don't!"

He leaped to the step, but before he could mount to the high seat the
auto was butting blindly against the wall.

"He's goin' ter shut off the juice!" squeaked the newsboy.

What the trouble had been with the levers Merry did not know. When he
took hold of them, the hansom became manageable and obedient. He shut
off the electricity, and the front wheels dropped down from the wall.
The next moment he swung to the ground and opened the door.

To his surprise, the man who emerged from the carriage was Dunstan Kirk,
the leader of the Yale ball-team.

"Glad to see you!" gasped Kirk. "I couldn't get out, and I was expecting
the thing to turn over! I believe I'm not hurt."

"The motorman is, though! He has been carried into the drug-store."

Frank looked