could tell what he was going to do, opened his eyes lazily
and closed them again. "I don't know why, Rad, unless they wanted to
wreck an automobile or a wagon. Maybe tramps did it for spite."

"Maybe some one done it to make yo' hab trouble, Mistah Swift."

"No, I hardly think so. I don't know of any one who would want to make
trouble for me, and how would they know I was coming this way--"

Tom suddenly checked himself. The memory of the scene at the auction
came back to him and he recalled what Andy Foger had said about
"'getting even."

"Which way did dat auto go?" resumed Eradicate.

"It came from down the road," answered Tom, not completing the sentence
he had left unfinished. "They dragged the log up to the foot of the
hill and left it. Then the auto went down this way." It was
comparatively easy, for a lad of such sharp observation as was Tom, to
trace the movements of the vehicle.

"Den if it's down heah, maybe we cotch 'em," suggested the colored man.

The young inventor did not answer at once. He was hurrying along, his
eyes on the telltale marks. He had proceeded some distance from the
place where the log was when he uttered a cry. At the same moment he
hurried from the road toward a thick clump of bushes that were in the
ditch alongside of the highway. Reaching them, he parted the leaves
and called:

"Here's the auto, Rad!"

The colored man ran up, his eyes wider open than ever. There, hidden
amid the bushes, was a large touring car.

"Whose am dat?" asked Eradicate.

Tom did not answer. He penetrated the underbrush, noting where the
broken branches had been bent upright after the forced entrance of the
car, the better to hide it. The young inventor was, seeking some clew
to discover the owner of the machine. To this end he climbed up in the
tonneau and was looking about when some one burst in through the screen
of bushes and a voice cried: "Here, you get out of my car!"

"Oh, is it your car, Andy Foger?" asked Tom calmly as he recognized his
squint-eyed rival. "I was just beginning to think it was. Allow me to
return your wrench," and he held out the one he had picked up near the
log. "The next time you drag trees across the road," went on the lad
in the tonneau, facing the angry and dismayed Andy, "I'd advise you to
post a notice at the top of the hill, so persons riding down will not
be injured."

"Notice--road--hill--logs!" stammered Andy, turning red under his
freckles.