“A better one than I could have given!” answered the stranger. “You must have seen him somewhere. I hope your experience with him was not so unfortunate as mine.”
“He made you trouble, did he?” asked Ben.
“He stole a pocketful of spark plugs,” was the reply.
“Yet you seem to be traveling all right,” suggested the boy.
“Oh, he didn’t get all I had,” was the answer. “I volplaned down to him, and he invited me to partake of a lunch he was serving himself on the grass. Just for form’s sake, I sat down with him. Then he began asking questions. He wanted to know where I came from, if I had seen any other machines in the air that afternoon, and if I had heard anything of two aeroplanes starting out on a journey across continent to the Pacific coast. After a time his questions became personal.”
“And you answered them, I suppose!” laughed the boy.
“No, I didn’t,” returned the stranger. “I closed up like a clam in a short time, and then he arose and, without my permission, began examining my machine. To make a long story short, he got the spark plugs out of a box under the seat without my knowing it. I never discovered the loss until I was some distance away.”
“You left him there in the dell you speak of?” asked Ben.
“Yes, I left him there in a little hollow between two hills.”
“Why didn’t you go back after you had discovered your loss?” asked Ben, suspiciously. “You might have caught him if you had gone back.”