d Fanning shout somewhere out of the dust cloud.

Whi-z-z-z-z-z-z! It was wild, exciting--dangerous!

"Roy," gasped Peggy, "if----"

But she got no further. There was a sudden soul-shaking shock. The front
of the car seemed to plough into the ground. A rending, splitting noise
filled the air.

The car stopped short, and its boy and girl occupants were hurtled, like
projectiles, into the storm center of disaster.

CHAPTER XVII.

JIMSY'S SUSPICIONS ARE ROUSED.

Peggy, after a moment in which the entire world seemed spinning about her
crazily, sat up. She had landed in a ditch, and partially against a clump
of springy bushes, which had broken the force of her fall. In fact, she
presently realized, that by one of those miraculous happenings that no one
can explain, she was unhurt.

The automobile, its hood crushed in like so much paper, had skidded into
the same ditch in which Peggy lay, and bumped into a small tree which it
had snapped clean off. But the obstacle had stopped it.

One wheel lay in the roadway. Evidently it had come off while the machine
was at top speed, and caused the crash. But Peggy noted all these things
automatically. She was looking about her for Roy.

From a clump of bushes close by there came a low groan of pain. The girl
sprang erect instantly, forgetting her own bruises and shaken nerves in
this sign that her brother was in pain. In the meantime, Fanning and
Regina Mortlake had stopped and turned the Blue Bird. They came back to
the scene of the wreck with every expression of concern on their faces.

Roy lay white and still in the midst of the brush into which he had been
hurled. There was a great cut across his forehead, and in reply to Peggy's
anxious inquiries, the lad, who was conscious, said that he thought that
his ankle had been broken. Peggy touched the ankle he indicated, and light
as her fingers fell upon it, the boy uttered an anguished moan.

"Oh, gee, Peg!" he cried bravely, screwing up his face in his endeavor not
to make an outcry, "that hurts like blazes."

"Poor boy," breathed Peggy tenderly, "I'm so sorry."

"I'm so glad you're not hurt, Sis," said the boy, "I don't matter much. I
wish you could stop this bleeding above my eye, though."

Peggy ripped off a flounce of her petticoat and formed it into a bandage.

"Can I help. I'm so sorry."

The voice was Fanning Harding's. He stood behind her with Regina at his
side.

"Oh, how dreadful." exclaimed the