t both Jasper McCutcheon and his
mechanician, and after standing on two wheels for an appreciable moment
of time, righted herself, panting, with her nose against a post.

Jasper sat up almost immediately and caught at his shoulder. The
mechanician was stunned. He got up, took a step or two and fell down,
weak with fright.

I do not recall very distinctly what happened next. We got out of the
machine, I remember, and Bettina was cutting off Jasper's sweater with
Charlie Sands' penknife, and crying as she did it. And Charlie Sands was
trying to prevent Jasper from getting back into his car, while Jasper
was protesting that he could win in two or more laps and that he could
drive with one hand--he'd only broken his arm.

The crowd had gathered round us, thick. Suddenly they drew back, and
in a sort of haze I saw Tish in Jasper's car, with Aggie, as white as
death, holding to Tish's sleeve and begging her not to get in. The next
moment Tish let in the clutch of the racer and Aggie took a sort of
flying leap and landed beside her in the mechanician's seat.

Charlie Sands saw it when I did, but we were both too late. Tish was
crossing the ditch into the track again, and the moment she struck level
ground she put up the gasoline.

It was just then that Aggie fell out, landing, as I have said before, in
a pile of sand. Tish said afterward that she never missed her. She had
just discovered that this was not Jasper's old car, which she knew
something about, but a new racer with the old hood and seat put on in
order to fool Mr. Ellis. She didn't know a thing about it.

Well, you know the rest--how Tish, trying to find how the gears worked,
side-swiped the Bonor car and threw it off the field and out of the
race; how, with the grandstand going crazy, she skidded off the track
into the field, turned completely round twice, and found herself on the
track again facing the way she wanted to go; how, at the last lap, she
threw a tire and, without cutting down her speed, bumped home the
winner, with the end of her tongue nearly bitten off and her spine
fairly driven up into her skull.

[Illustration: Without cutting down her speed, bumped home the winner]

All this is well known now, as is also the fact that Mr. Ellis
disappeared from the judges' stand after a word or two with Mr. Atkins,
and was never seen at Morris Valley again.

Tish came out of the race ahead by half the gate money--six thousand
dollars--by a thousand dolla