of an
Electric Monarch has to do is to pump a little pump-handle or press a
little button and he's off without it costing him a cent. My story
will sure make a big sensation!"

"Well, you want to tone down that part about its not costing a cent,"
chimed in Jack as they coasted down a hill. "The expense of the motor
and the self-lubricating bearings and so on is pretty steep. But we
hope in time to be able to cheapen the whole car."

They were shooting swiftly down the hill as he spoke. The next moment
he looked ahead again as they shot round a curve. As they did so his
hand sought a button and an ear-splitting screech arose from a
powerful siren.

In the center of the road, quite oblivious to the oncoming automobile,
was an odd figure, that of a small man in a rusty, baggy suit of
black.

He had a hammer in his hand and was hitting some object in the roadway
over which he was bending with a concentrated interest that made him
quite unconscious of the onrushing car.

"Hi! Get out of the way!" yelled the boys.

But the man did not look up. Instead, he kept tapping away with his
hammer at whatever it was that absorbed his attention so intently.

CHAPTER II.

AN ENCOUNTER WITH A "CHARACTER."

Jack jammed down the emergency brakes, which were pneumatic and
operated from the pressure tank, with a suddenness that sent Dick
Donovan almost catapulting out of the tonneau.

"Jumping jiggers of Joppa!" he shouted, for he had not yet seen the
obstacle in the road, "what's happened? Are we bust up?"

"No, but if I hadn't stopped when I did we'd have bust someone else
up," declared Jack. "Look there!"

"Can you beat it?" exclaimed Tom.

As the brakes brought the car to a stop within a foot of his stout,
rotund figure, the little man in the center of the road looked up with
a sort of mild surprise through a pair of astonishingly thick-lensed
eyeglasses secured to his ears by a thick, black ribbon. He wore a
broad-brimmed black hat and wrinkled, baggy clothes of bar-cloth, and
a huge pair of square-toed boots that looked as if their tips had been
chopped off with an ax.

Over his shoulder was slung a canvas bag which appeared to be heavy
and bulged as if several irregularly shaped, solid substances were
inside of it. The spot where this odd encounter took place was some
distance from any town, but a bicycle leaning against a tree at the
roadside showed how the little man had got there.

"Say, would you mind