ou'll be his boss, I guess. He won't care much about that."

"Why?"

"Because he's been runnin' things in a way. I hope you get along with
him."

"So do I----"

"Because if you don't, Shad will eat you at one gobble."

"Oh!" said Peter with a smile. "But perhaps you exaggerate. Don't you
think I might take two--er--gobbles?"

Beth looked him over, and then smiled encouragingly.

"Maybe," she said, "but your hands don't look over-strong."

Peter looked at his right hand curiously. It was not as brown as hers,
but the fingers were long and sinewy.

"They are, though. When you practice five hours a day on the piano, your
hands will do almost anything you want them to."

A silence which Peter improved by shifting his suitcase. The weight of
it had ceased to be amusing. And he was about to ask her how much
further Black Rock was when there was a commotion down the road ahead of
them, as a dark object emerged from around the bend and amid a whirl of
dust an automobile appeared.

"It's the 'Lizzie'," exclaimed Beth unemotionally.

And in a moment the taxi service of Black Rock was at Peter's disposal.

"Carburetor trouble," explained the soiled young man at the wheel
briefly, without apology. And with a glance at Peter's bag--

"Are you the man for McGuire's on the six-thirty?"

Peter admitted that he was and the boy swung the door of the tonneau
open.

"In here with me, Beth," he said to the girl invitingly.

In a moment, the small machine was whirled around and started in the
direction from which it had come, bouncing Peter from side to side and
enveloping him in dust. Jim Hagerman's "Lizzie" wasted no time, once it
set about doing a thing, and in a few moments from the forest they
emerged into a clearing where there were cows in a meadow, and a view of
houses. At the second of these, a frame house with a portico covered
with vines and a small yard with a geranium bed, all enclosed in a
picket fence, the "Lizzie" suddenly stopped and Beth got down.

"Much obliged, Jim," he heard her say.

Almost before Peter had swept off his hat and the girl had nodded, the
"Lizzie" was off again, through the village street, and so to a wooden
bridge across a tea-colored stream, up a slight grade on the other side,
where Jim Hagerman stopped his machine and pointed to a road.

"That's McGuire's--in the pines. They won't let me go no further."

"How much do I owe you?" asked Peter, getting down.

"It's paid for, Mi