es and miles away.

If they were unwilling to match wits with a woman, why did they not say
so? Why condescend to kidnaping a woman and running away with her from
the fight? If this was the kind of a man John Allingham was--

They were turning into a cross-road now which led up-hill into another
strip of wood. Shadows of tall pines and oak trees made it like a solemn
temple, into the arched aisles of which they seemed to be entering.
Gertrude did not see, and apparently the motionless automaton before her
did not, that other machine gliding on in the shadowy road above and
toward them. There was a jar and a crash and they all came down
together.

Gertrude Van Deusen, inside her prison, was not hurt, but at last, her
chauffeur was shaken out of his stoicism. Extricating himself from the
wreck, he hurried to unfasten the door which was uppermost.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, speaking for the first time in twenty-two
miles.

"I don't know. I think not. But let me out," she answered.

He drew her out and she was soon on the ground again. There was a groan.

"Who is that? There is a man hurt somewhere. We must get him out;" she
said. "Hurry."

By this time the driver of the other machine had crawled out and was on
his feet.

"It's Allingham," he said, in a tone of horror. "He's under the gear--"

"Then get him out--quick," cried Gertrude.

Her coolness and quickness of wit stimulated the two men and they set
about releasing the imprisoned sufferer. But it was Gertrude Van Deusen
who directed them and drew him out from under the wrecked machine, as
the two chauffeurs lifted the weight above him.

It was John Allingham--quite unconscious.

CHAPTER VII

An Unusual Ride

"We shall have to go back to the nearest farmhouse for help," said the
chauffeur who had driven Gertrude Van Deusen. "We cannot get the
machines apart without help. Can you stay here with him--alone?"

"Yes, yes, go on," she replied. "But first open his coat and get me his
handkerchief." She was sitting on the ground with Allingham's head in
her lap, staunching with her mouchoir the blood which flowed fast from a
cut on his forehead. "And hurry, for we must get him to a doctor as
quickly as possible."

A moment later she was alone in the beauty of the night, except for the
man who lay unconscious beside her. She folded her own handkerchief and
laid it on the wound and then arranged the larger one as a bandage. In
tying it around his f