By then they were at the foot of the slope and Matt brought the car to a halt. Here he got out and turned to the girl.
"If you'll jump down for a minute," said he, "I'll give that transmission a sizing and see if I can do anything with it."
"But won't the other car come?" she demurred.
"Those fellows will think better of it. If they hadn't been excited they wouldn't have tried to chase me. They've had time to cool off, now, and to think better of what they're doing."
Matt helped the girl down, and, for the first time, saw that she was very young and very pretty. There was a familiar cast to her features, somehow, which aroused his wonder. Was it possible that he had ever met her before?
Without trying very hard to answer this mental question, he stripped off the transmission cover and thrust a hand inside.
The metal band encircling the low-gear drum had sustained a fracture. It was made of bronze, and had been slotted for convenience in lubricating, and the break was through two of the slots.
"The low gear is chewed up," he remarked to the girl, "and that part of the machine is permanently retired. I guess we'll have to go into Madison on the reverse, and it will be well to go slow so as not to overheat the engine. We can take care of that, all right, if we stop occasionally to cool off. How far are we from town, by the way?"
"Not more than two miles from Sherman Avenue and Lake Mendota."
"We'll get over that quick enough. You don't mind my riding with you?"