“Couldn’t be old Somes, could it?” asked Wiley Moyle. “He was almost mad enough to bite you fellows, to-night.”
“Nonsense! Josiah wouldn’t do such a thing. He has too much respect for the law,” said Monroe Stevens.
“I think it is very fortunate,” put in Mildred Kent, earnestly, “that the person—whoever he was—did not manage to utterly ruin the automobile. Suppose he comes here before you can get the derrick erected again, and throws these boulders down upon the car?”
“He’ll not do that!” declared Dan, firmly.
“How do you know?”
“Because either Billy or I will be on this spot until we get the car out of the place. We have too much money invested in the machine to have it wrecked.”
“Right, Dannie!” declared his brother. “And I’ll stay here now. You go on home, ask father to help you with the milk in the morning, and then come down with the team and another post as early as you can. If there’s any way of getting the car up, we’ll get at it without further delay.”
It was so arranged, and Billy sat down beside the break in the wall while the others motored away. His own machine he carefully hid in a clump of bushes, and proposed to keep awake until morning so that the mean-spirited person whom he suspected of cutting down the pole, should not return and do any damage to the motor car.
Billy heard dogs barking in the distance—they seemed to start far down the road toward the Mayberry farm at which he and his young friends had spent such a pleasant evening. First one dog, and then another, joined the chorus, the sound of which drew nearer.
“Somebody coming along the road,” thought the lad. “They’re coming fast and stirring up a racket as they come. Somebody is traveling fast, for the houses are a good way apart, and the dogs join each other in hailing the passer-by in one, two, three order.”