run!"

"Going--to!" repeated Dorothy, all out of breath from her own efforts
to catch up to the runaway.

But Tavia darted on. The strange man kept well ahead. Dorothy paused
one moment from sheer exhaustion. Then she saw the wagon overturn!

The next instant she noted that the stranger had grabbed the horse by
the trailing reins.

"Quick!" shrieked Tavia. "The girls may be under the cart!"

With strength gathered from every desperation Dorothy ran on.

She was beside the overturned wagon now, and without uttering a word
she crawled in through the upright sticks, down amid the dust and hay.

Three girls, so wound together as to look like one, lay on one side of
the wrecked vehicle.

"Dorothy!" gasped Rose-Mary. "Are you safe!"

"Yes, but you--Nita and Edna?" gasped Dorothy, pantingly.

"I think Nita has fainted," replied Rose-Mary. "But Edna is all right.
Where is Tavia?"

"Safe," answered Dorothy. "A strange man stopped the runaway. Tavia is
helping hold the horse. We must get the traces loose before we can
attend to Nita."

She made her way out of the overturned wagon. The traces were
unfastened and the horse was free, and the strange man was actually
astride the animal.

"Why," exclaimed Dorothy, "that horse will bolt again. You had best
make him fast somewhere!"

The stranger looked at her with the air of a Chesterfield.

"By kindness we alone subdue," he said.

Dorothy stared at him. What could he mean?

Tavia seemed to have forgotten the predicament of her companions--she
appeared charmed by the stranger--who really was good looking.

"There comes the man who owns the horse," remarked Dorothy, as the
frenzied farmer, whip in hand, ran toward the stranger, yelling all
sorts of unintelligible things in the way of threats and predictions.
He would see to it personally, he declared, that these things would
happen to the man who dared ride his used-up horse.

"A fight to finish it off," exulted Tavia, and Dorothy, for the
moment, felt as if she could find it in her heart to despise so
frivolous a girl. The next second she remembered Nita, and turned back
to the wrecked hayrick.

"It's all well enough for you to laugh," complained the
badly-frightened Nita, "but I can't see where the joke comes in. Just
look at me!"

"A perfect beauty!" declared Tavia. "The rips are all in one piece.
That rent near the hem is positively artistic--looks like the river
Nile!"

It was some time later, but they