hops with a broken front spring. The man driving it touched his cap to
Gerard as they passed, swinging one arm behind him in a significant
gesture and shouting a warning concerning the bridge ahead. Corrie
checked his speed, and barely skirted the deep washed-out hole that had
caused the other machine's disaster.

"There was rain yesterday and freezing weather last night," Gerard
communicated, at his ear. "Now it is beginning to melt again and
playing the mischief with the roads. There is a right-angle turn
coming."

Corrie nodded, fully occupied. His blood sang through his veins, his
fingers gripped the steering-wheel lovingly; he was revelling in the
speed exhilaration he had never expected to feel again. The driver who
hoped for no such commutation of sentence watched him with quietly sad
eyes; eyes in which no one ever was allowed to surprise their present
expression, least of all Corrie Rose.

Near noon a tire blew out. Gerard sat on the side of the Mercury and
gave bits of ironical advice to the worker while Corrie changed a tire
alone for the first time in his life. Corrie bore the teasing sweetly,
even when a tool slipped and tore his cold-sensitized fingers.

"I know," he deprecated. "Dean always did it and I just helped. I never
did anything thoroughly; an amateur isn't a professional. We would have
lost time by that in a road race."

"You will learn. Rupert and I used to do it in two minutes from stop to
restart," Gerard returned. "There--gather up your tools; we will go home
to luncheon."

"To the factory, first?"

"No. Go slowly and I will show you a short cut."

But Corrie was not in a mood to go slowly, so that they almost missed
the driveway that branched from the macadam track to curve around into a
park set thickly with fragrant cedars, central in which grove stood the
quaintly stiff house of dark brick and stone.

"Run around to the garage," Gerard directed. "Since you will want the
car all the time, you might as well keep it here and use the short cut
out to the road. I will get out here and go into the house."

Corrie obediently bent to his levers.

"All the time?" he repeated, with an indrawn breath of reluctant
ecstasy. "All the time!"

As Gerard turned to the house, a small figure advanced to meet him.

"We've sent out a gang to massage some of the freckles defacing the
speedway," Rupert informed him. "Briggs chugged in with a broken spring,
Norris side-wiped a fence, and Phillips