and rocked along. But at the edge
of the creek he stopped and turned around.

"Look here," he said. "This is suicide. This car will never do it."

"It has just done it," Tish replied, inexorably. "Go on."

"I might get down, but I'll never get up the other side."

"Go on."

"Tish!" Aggie cried, anguished. "He may be killed, and you'll be
responsible."

Aggie is a sentimental creature, and the young man was very
good-looking. Indeed, arriving at the brink, I myself had qualms. But
Tish has a will of iron, and was, besides, still rankling with insult.
She merely glued her eye again to the sight of the gun on my shoulder,
and said:

"_Go on!_"

Well, he got the car down somehow or other, but nothing would make it
climb the other side. It would go up a few feet and then slide back. And
at last Tish herself saw that it was hopeless, and told him to turn and
go down the creek bed.

It was a very rough creek bed, and one of the springs broke almost at
once. We followed along the bank, and I think Tish found a sort of grim
humor in seeing the young man bouncing up into the air and coming down
on the wheel, for I turned once and found her smiling faintly. However,
she merely called to him to be careful of the other springs or she would
have to ask him to pay for them.

He stopped then, in a pool about two feet deep, and glared up at her.

"Oh, certainly," he said. "I suppose the fact that I have permanently
bent in my floating ribs on this infernal wheel doesn't matter."

At last he came to a shelving bank, and got the car out. I think he
contemplated making a run for it then and getting away, but Tish
observed that she would shoot into the rear tires if he did so. So he
went back to the road, slowly, and there stopped the car.

However, Tish was not through with him. She made him climb the chestnut
tree and bring down her dress skirt, and then turn his back while she
put it on. By that time, the young man was in a chastened mood, and he
apologized handsomely.

"But I think I have made amends, ladies," he said. "I feel that I shall
never be the same again. When I started out today I was a blithe young
thing, feeling life in every limb, as the poet says. Now what I feel in
every limb does not belong in verse. May I have the shotgun, please?"

But Tish had no confidence in him, and we took the gun with us,
arranging to leave it at the first signpost, about a mile away. We left
him there, and Aggie reported that