a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand.

"I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "Guess
I'd better set up a sign down here so's other of you autermobile folks kin
take heart if ye git stuck."

"You are just as welcome as the flowers in spring, tra-la!" cried Helen,
fairly dancing with delight.

"You are an angel visitor, Mr. Paul," said the plump girl.

"I been called a lot o' things besides an angel," the bearded woodsman
said, his eyes twinkling. "My wife, 'fore she died, had an almighty tart
tongue."

"And _now_?" queried Helen wickedly.

"Wal, wherever the poor critter's gone, I reckon she's l'arned to bridle
her tongue," said Mr. Peterby Paul cheerfully. "Howsomever, as the feller
said, that's another day's job. Mr. Frenchy, let's pour this gasoline
into them tanks."

Ruth insisted upon paying for the gasoline, and paying well. Then Peterby
Paul gave them careful directions as to the situation of Abby Drake's
house, at which it seemed the lost woman must belong.

"Abby always has her house full of city folks in the summer," the woodsman
said. "She is pretty near a Whosis herself, Abby Drake is."

With which rather unfavorable intimation regarding the despised "city
folks," Mr. Peterby Paul saw them start on over the now badly rutted road.

Helen drove the smaller car with Ruth sitting beside her. Henri Marchand
took the wheel of the touring car, and the run to Boston was resumed.

"But we must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what
by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline."

"I'll keep the horn blowing," Helen said, suiting action to her speech and
sounding a musical blast through the wooded country that lay all about.
"He ought to know his own auto-horn."

The tone of the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it from
any other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. But
then, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note.

She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing to
toot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside an
anxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spot
where the two cars had been stalled.

"That is the Drake place. It must be!" Ruth exclaimed, putting out a hand
to warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.

A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly out
into the