Tom crouched behind the windshield and "let her
out."

It was a straight piece of road, as he had said. But before they reached
the first turn there was another house beside the road--a small
farmhouse. Beyond it was a field, with a stone wall, and it chanced that
just as the Camerons' car roared down the road, clearing at least thirty
miles an hour, the leader of a flock of sheep in that pasture, butted
through a place in the stone-fence and started to cross the highway.

One sheep would not have made much trouble; it would have been easy to
dodge just one object. But here came a string of the woolly
creatures--and greater fools than sheep have not been discovered in the
animal world!

The old black-faced ram trotted across the road and through a gap in a
fence on the river side. After him crowded the ewes and youngsters.

The roaring auto frightened the creatures, but they would not give way
before it. They knew no better than to follow that old ram through the
gap, one after the other.

Tom had shut off the engine and applied the brakes, as the girls
shrieked. But he had been going too fast to stop short of the place
where the sheep were passing. At the end of the flock came a lamb,
bleating and trying to keep up with its mother.

"Oh, the lamb!" shrieked Helen.

"Look out, Tom!" added Ruth.

The lamb did not get across the road. The car struck it, and with a
pitiful "baa-a-a!" it was knocked a dozen feet.

In a moment the car stopped. It had scarcely run its entire length past
the spot where the lamb was struck. The poor creature lay panting,
"baa-aing" feebly, beside the road.

Ruth was out of the tonneau and kneeling beside the creature almost
before the wheels ceased to roll. The mother ewe had crowded through the
fence. Now she put her foolish face out, and called to the lamb to
follow.

"He can't!" almost sobbed Ruth. "He has a broken leg. Oh! what a foolish
mother you were to lead him right into danger."

Tom was silent and looked pretty solemn, while Helen was scolding him
nervously--although she knew that he was not really at fault.

"If you hadn't been speeding, this wouldn't have happened, Tom Cameron!"
she said. "I told you so."

"Oh, all right. You're a fine prophetess," grunted her brother. "Keep on
rubbing it in."

The lamb had tried to scramble up, but one of its forelegs certainly was
broken. It tumbled over on its side again, and Ruth held it down
tenderly and tried to soothe it