lian, and switched it on to
full speed.

It jerked forward; and the soldiers ran heavily after it.

"Hold it back! Hold it back!" screamed Tinker, and with the
unquestioning obedience of the perfectly disciplined man, a simple
young soldier caught hold of the back of the car, and threw all his
heart and strength into the effort to stop it, only to find himself
running fast. At sixty yards he was running faster and shouting
loudly. At eighty yards, he stopped shouting, let go, and fell down.
Tinker looked back, and saw him sitting up in the dust and shaking his
fist, while forty yards beyond him his fellow-soldiers danced
gesticulating in the middle of the road.

[Illustration: "Hold it back!" screamed Tinker.]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

TINKER MEETS HIS OLD NURSE

Tinker let the car rip on, the while he considered what he should do.
He was excited, determined, he accepted readily enough the
responsibility which had fallen upon him, but he was hardly happy. He
could see no hope of rescuing Dorothy and Elsie by himself, even if he
caught the carriage; and since he reckoned that it would take his
father two or three hours to turn the Riviera upside down, and
extricate himself and Mr. Rainer from the extremely neat and effective
trap into which they had fallen, he could look for no help from them
till far into the night. For a while he suffered from the sense that
he had bitten off, or rather had had thrust into his mouth, more than
he could chew. Then of a sudden he saw that the really important
thing, the dogging the kidnappers, was in his power, and he regained
his cheerfulness.

He drove on the car at full speed for ten miles, and inquired of a
peasant walking beside a cart loaded with bags of grain, if he had seen
the carriage. The peasant had seen it; he was vague as to how long
ago, and how far away, but Tinker was sure that he had seen it.
Accordingly, he drove on the car at full speed again. In this way,
going at full speed, and now and again slowing down to inquire, he got
over a good many miles. He was frightened when he went through a town
lest the police should try to stop him, but it seemed that they had
received no such instructions from Ventimiglia. All the while he was
drawing nearer the carriage, for all that, somewhere or other, it had
plainly changed horses.

At last he made up his mind that he would overtake it in the next seven
miles; and he bucketed the car along for all she was wor