determined tightening of the lips.

"I guess he won't get anything on us," commented Ted MacIlvaine,
decidedly. "It'll be rather fun, fellows, making him back down."

There was an emphatic chorus of agreement, but little further discussion,
for the question of lunch was beginning to be pressing. Though barely
eleven, boxes and haversacks were produced and the next half-hour
enlivened with one of the most satisfying of occupations. Toward noon
they stopped at a small town for "gas." When the car started on again,
there was a pleasant sense of excitement in the realization that another
couple of hours ought to bring them to Clam Cove.

The country had changed greatly from that around Hillsgrove. It looked
wilder, more unsettled. Instead of fields of ripening grain, orchards, or
acres of truck-gardens, the road was bordered by long stretches of
woods and tangled undergrowth. The farm-houses were farther apart and
less pretentious. There was even a faint tang of salt in the air. At
length, from the summit of an elevation, Mr. Curtis pointed out a distant
hill showing hazily blue on the horizon.

[Illustration: The car crashed into the weather-worn railing of the
bridge]

"That's Lost Mine Hill, fellows!" he said. "From there, it's not more
than three miles to our stopping-place."

Eagerly they stared and speculated as the truck clattered down the
incline, its horn sounding raucously. At the bottom there was a straight
level stretch of a thousand feet or so, with a bridge midway along
it. It was sandy here in the hollow, and the truck had made little more
than half the distance to the bridge when all at once, with a weird
wailing of the siren, a great gray car shot into sight around a curve
beyond.

It was going very fast. Dale and Court, hanging over the side of the
truck together, had barely time to note the trim chauffeur behind the
wheel and a man and woman in the luxurious tonneau when the explosion of
a blow-out, sharp as a pistol-shot, smote on their startled senses.
The car leaped, quivered, skidded in the loose sand, crashed into the
weather-worn railing of the bridge, hung suspended for an instant
above the stream, and then toppled over and out of sight. There was a
tremendous splash, a great spurt of flying water, and then--silence!

CHAPTER XX

FIRST AID

Dale never knew just how he got out of the truck. Gripped by the horror
and suddenness of the accident, his mind was a blank until he found