peaking of the young man," said Aggie. "My dear child, all over
this great land of ours today, here and there are wretches who would use
a confiding young woman in order----"

"Barbed wire!" said Tish exultantly, and stopped the car with a jerk. In
an instant she was out in the road, cutting lengths of barbed wire from
a fence with the scissors and placing them across the road behind us.
Her expression was set and tense. When she had placed some six pieces of
wire in position, she returned to the car.

"We can thank the war for that," she observed, coolly. "As long as the
barbed wire fences hold out they'll never get us."

The first car was in sight by that time, and we could see that Mr.
Culver and the policeman were in it. They shouted with joy when they saw
us, but Tish merely smiled, and let in the clutch. Soon after we heard a
series of small explosions, and Tish observed that the enemy attack was
checked against our barbed wire, and that she reckoned we could hold the
position indefinitely.

Aggie looked back and reported that they were both out of the car, and
that the policeman was standing on one foot and hopping up and down.

It had been Tish's intention, as I learned later, merely to take the
young woman for a country ride, and there to strive to instill into her
the weakness and folly of being married by Mr. Culver as an exemption
plea. But as we had been making forty-five miles an hour by the
speedometer, there had been little opportunity.

However, as the last car was now standing on four rims in the barbed
wire entanglement behind us, and as Tish's farm was not far ahead, she
improved the occasion with a short but highly patriotic speech, flung
over her shoulder.

"I don't believe it," said Myrtle, sullenly. "He loves me. We only ran
away today instead of some other day later because my father is leading
the parade in my town, and mother is presenting a flag at the
schoolhouse."

"Very well," said Tish. "If he loves you, well and good. When your young
man has registered, I'll see that you get married, if I have to kidnap a
preacher to do it. But I'll tell you right now, I don't think you'll be
getting anything worth having."

Well, Myrtle grew quieter then, and I heard Aggie saying Miss Tish never
made a promise she could not fulfill. She then told about Mr. Wiggins,
and had just reached the place where he had slipped on the eve of his
wedding and fallen off a roof, when the car stopped dead.