As she drew up the car in front of what appeared to be a very old, long-deserted fisherman’s house and turned to see her passengers alight, she found the one-eyed man bending over his companion.
“He’s fainted, miss,” he said. “If you’ll go around back of the house to the old well and draw up a pail of cold water, I guess we can revive him. Just let down the pail by the wheel at the side—you’ll see the handle,—and then get a glass or pitcher or something ’round there in the shed.”
As the man was apparently very busy loosening the neck-band of his friend’s shirt, there seemed nothing else for Billie to do but to obey his directions. In fact, her sympathies were so deeply aroused that she was more than eager to help.
She dashed around the corner in an instant, rushed to the old well, and exerting her strength turned the handle of the rusty wheel around and around while the rattling chain lowered the moss-covered bucket deeper and deeper until it struck the water. Waiting only until the bucket was filled, she began to raise it as rapidly as she could, but her muscles were sorely tried by the stubbornness of the rusty wheel and the additional weight of the water.
The thought of the exhausted man spurred her on, however, and at length, flushed and perspiring, she succeeded in drawing the bucket to a little shelf where she left it while she searched for a receptacle in which to carry the water. She found no difficulty in pushing open a loosely-hung door at the end of the shed, and, after groping around a moment or two in the semi-darkness, she discovered a battered tin pail. Hastening back with it, she rinsed and filled it, and hurried around to the front of the house.
As she turned the corner, she stopped short! Where were the two men? Where was her machine? Where—was—her—machine?
Too dazed to move, Billie stood rooted to the spot while the water trickled out of a hole in the pail and made a little pool at her feet.
Suddenly she gasped, “They must be around the other corner. They must be!”
But they were not!—and then Billie noticed the tracks in the crushed grass that told the tale. The motor car had been turned and driven away up the lane!
Billie sank down on the step in front of the old house almost too spent with her exertions and her shock to think.