uld budge. Maud and the old man got
down, the latter with relief.

'Stuck, eh?' said Dan. 'No steam?'

'That's it!' Harold cried, slapping his leg. 'What an ass I am! She
wants petrol, that's all. Maud, pass a couple of cans. They're under
the seat there, behind. No; on the left, child.'

However, there was no petrol on the car.

'That's that cursed Durand' (Durand being the new chauffeur--French, to
match the car). 'I told him not to forget. Last thing I said to the
fool! Maud, I shall chuck that chap!'

'Can't we do anything?' asked Maud stiffly, putting her lips together.

'We can walk back to Turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!' snapped
Harold. 'That's what we can do!'

'Sithee,' said Uncle Dan. 'There's the Plume o' Feathers half-a-mile
back. Th' landlord's a friend o' mine. I can borrow his mare and trap,
and drive to Turnhill and fetch some o' thy petrol, as thou calls it.'

'It's awfully good of you, uncle.'

'Nay, lad, I'm doing it for please mysen. But Maud mun come wi' me.
Give us th' money for th' petrol, as thou calls it.'

'Then I must stay here alone?' Harold complained.

'Seemingly,' the old man agreed.

After a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, Dan had no
difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend's white mare and black
trap. He himself helped in the harnessing. Just as he was driving
triumphantly away, with that delicious vision Maud on his left hand and
a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in.

'Give us a couple o' penny smokes, matey,' he said to the landlord, and
lit one.

The mare could go, and Dan could make her go, and she did go. And the
whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it dashed
into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted Harold had
lighted on his car.

The red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks exactly as
well as the red end of an Havana. Moreover, the mare caracolled
ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the stable-boy had to
skip down quick and hold her head.

'How much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?' Dan asked,
while Harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the tank.

'Not far off twelve hundred,' answered Harold lightly. 'Keep that cigar
away from here.'

'Fifteen pun' ud buy this mare,' Dan announced to the road.

'Now, all aboard!' Harold commanded at length. 'How much shall I give
to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?'

'Nothing,' said Dan. 'I havena' fi