is eyes upon the distance. For an hour he had whirred
through that wondrous shimmer of color with a flippant loitering breeze
in his face, sweet from the crimson clover that poured and rioted
over the roadside: past nests of meditative farm-buildings, fields of
baby-green corn, occasional ramshackle dirt-daubed cabins with doorways
hung with yellow honeysuckle and flagrant trumpet-vines, and here and
there a quiet old church, Gothic and ivied and gray whose leaded
windows watched benignantly over myrtled graveyards. A great soothing
suspiration of peace seemed to swell from it all to lap the traveler
like the moist balminess of a semi-tropical sea.

"Chum old man," said Valiant, with his arm about the bulldog's neck, "if
those color-photograph chaps had shown us this, we simply wouldn't have
believed it, would we? Such scenery beats the roads we're used to, what?
If it were all like this--but of course it isn't. We'll get to our own
bailiwick presently, and wake up. Never mind; we're country gentlemen,
Chummy, en route to our estate! No silly snuffle, now! Out with it!
That's right,"--as a sharp bark rewarded him--"that's the proper
enthusiasm." He wound his strong fingers in a choking grip in the scruff
of the white neck, as a chipmunk chattered by on the low stone wall.
"No, you don't, you cannibal! He's a jolly little beggar, and he doesn't
deserve being eaten!"

He filled his brier-wood pipe and drew in great breaths of the fragrant
incense. "What a pity you don't smoke, Chum; you miss such a lot! I saw
a poodle once in a circus that did. But he'd been to college. Think how
you could think if you only smoked! We may have to do a lot of thinking,
where we're bound to. Wonder what we'll find? Oh, that's right, leave it
all to me, of course, and wash your paws of the whole blooming
business!"

After a time he shook himself and knocked the red core from the
pipe-bowl against his boot-heel. "I hate to start," he confessed, half
to the dog and half to himself. "To leave anything so sheerly beautiful
as this! However, on with the dance! By the road map the village can't
be far now. So long, Mr. Bull!"

He clutched the self-starter. But there was only a protestant wheeze;
the car declined to budge. Climbing down, he cranked vigorously. The
motor turned over with a surly grunt of remonstrance and after a
tentative _throb-throb_, coughed and stopped dead. Something was wrong.
With a sigh he flung off his tweed jacket, don