turn uselessly in his hands!"

"They're up!" cried a dozen voices. "No, one's up and one's under."
"Who's caught in the wreck--Lestrange or his man?"

But before the people who surged over the track, breaking all
restraint, before the electric ambulance, Dick Ffrench reached the
marred thing that had been the Mercury car. It was Lestrange who had
painfully struggled to one knee beside the machine, fighting hard for
breath to speak.

"Take the car off Rupert," he panted, at Dick's cry of relief on
seeing him. "I'm all right--take the car off Rupert."

The next instant they were surrounded, overwhelmed with eager aid. The
ambulance came up and a surgeon precipitated himself toward Lestrange.

"Stand back," the surgeon commanded generally. "Are you trying to
smother him? Stand back."

But it was he who halted before a gesture from Lestrange, who leaned
on Dick and a comrade from the camp.

"Go over there, to Rupert."

"You first--"

"No."

There was nothing to do except yield. Shrugging his shoulders, the
surgeon paused the necessary moment. A moment only; there was a
scattering of the hushed workers, a metallic crash.

From the space the car had covered a small figure uncoiled,
lizardlike, and staggered unsteadily erect.

"Where's Darling Lestrange?" was hurled viciously across the silence.
"Gee, you're a slow bunch of workers! Where's Lestrange?"

The tumult that broke loose swept all to confusion. And after all it
was Lestrange who was put in the surgeon's care, while Rupert rode
back to the camp on the driver's seat of the ambulance.

"Tell Emily I'll come over to her as soon as I'm fit to look at," was
the message Lestrange gave Dick. "And when you go back to the factory,
have your steering-knuckles strengthened."

Dick exceeded his commission by transmitting the speech entire;
repeating the first part to Emily with all affectionate solicitude,
and flinging the second cuttingly at his uncle and Bailey.

"The doctors say he ought to be in bed, but he won't go," he
concluded. "No, you can't see him until they get through patching him
up at the hospital tent; they put every one out except Rupert. _He_
hasn't a scratch, after having a ninety Mercury on top of him. You're
to come over to our camp, Emily, and wait for Lestrange. I suppose
everybody had better come."

It was a curious and an elevating thing to see Dickie assume command
of his family, but no one demurred. An official, recognizing in him