Ferd fixed it with his pen-knife. Then he threw the doors open and we backed into the road. The last thing I remember is that as we started off a window was raised in the farmhouse and somebody yelled after us to stop.
"Damnation!" said Ferd between his teeth. "He'll telephone ahead and they'll cut us off!"
"We needn't stick to the main road. We can go back through the country."
We found a lane leading off half a mile farther along and I turned into it. It was rough, but its very condition argued for safety. As Ferd said, no one in his sane mind would choose such a road. The secret of the lane came out a mile or so farther on, however, when it came to an end in a barnyard. It was a blow, really. We did not dare to go back and we could not possibly go ahead.
"I can go up to the house and ask about the road," Ferd said. "The old stage road ought to be round here somewhere. If we can't find it there's nothing to do but to walk, Fan."
"I can't walk," I said, "and I won't walk. I'm in my stocking feet. I'm through. Let's just go back and get arrested and have it over. I can't stand much more."
"It's only twelve miles or so to town."
"I couldn't walk twelve miles to escape hanging!"
Ferd crawled out of the car and through a pig yard. I heard the pigs squealing. And then for five awful minutes I heard nothing except his distant knock and muffled voices. Then there was a silence, and out of it came Ferd headlong. He fell over the fence and landed in the mud beside the car.
"Quick!" he panted. "Turn round and get back to the main road. They've got him on the telephone, and in another minute——"
Did you ever try to turn an automobile in a panic and a small barnyard, with broken mowing machines and old wagons everywhere? I just could not do it. I got part way round, with Ferd begging me for Heaven's sake to get some speed on, when we heard people coming from the house on a run, and a woman yelling from a window that she could see us and to shoot quick.
There was a field next the barnyard—a pasture, I suppose—and the bars were down that led into it. I just headed the car for it and shut my eyes. Then we were shooting forward in a series of awful bumps, with Ferd holding on with both hands, and the noise behind was dying away.
I do not recall the details of that part of the trip. Ferd says we went through two creeks and a small woods, and entirely through and over a barbed-wire fence, which was probably where we got our punctures. However that may be, in five minutes or so we drew up just inside a fence on the other side of which was a road. And we had two flat tires.
Ferd tried to take the fence down, but he could not; so I did the only thing I could think of, and butted it down with the car. The glass in the lamps was smashed, but we were too far gone by that time to care. I had just one thought; if the gas only held out!
Ferd was quite sure he knew the way to town, but it turned out he did not. For hours and hours we bumped along on two tires and two rims, until my shoulders felt torn from their sockets. The worst of it was the noise we made. Every now and then we passed a farmhouse where the lights were going and everybody had been roused for the automobile thieves; and, instead of slipping past, we bumped by like a circus parade with a calliope.
The moon was gone by that time; and, our lamps being broken, more than once we left the road entirely and rolled merrily along in a field until we brought up against something. And, of course, we met a car. We heard it coming, but there was nothing to do but bump along. It was a limousine, and it hailed us and drew up so we could not pass.
"In trouble?" a man called.
"Nothing serious," Ferd said peevishly.
"Glad to give you a hand. You're cutting your tires to bits."
"No; thanks."
"I can take you back to town if you like."
It was Bill Henderson, Jane's husband, on his way from the club to his mother's in the country! I could not even breathe. Ferd knew it too, that minute.
"We are getting along all right," he snapped, trying to disguise his voice. "If you'll get your car out of the way——"
"Oh, all right, Ferd, old chap!" said Bill, and signalled his man to go on.
We sat as if petrified. Bill was Ida's cousin! The way of the transgressor is hard; though why one should have to lose a reputation built up by years of careful living just for one silly indiscretion is what gets me. I put a hand on Ferd's arm.
"I'm gone!" I wailed. "It will be all over town to-morrow. Bill's the worst old gossip. Oh, Ferd!"
"He didn't see you," Ferd snapped. "For goodness' sake, Fan, shut up! This is my mess. There isn't any limit to the things he can say about me."
We bumped on a little farther. I was crying, I'll admit; my head ached and my spine was jarred numb.
"You'll have to do one thing," he said at last. "You'll have to tell Ida it was you. Heaven knows what she'll think."
"I'll die first!" I snapped.
Well, we got into town finally and it was three-thirty by the first clock we saw. Ferd got out and looked at the car, and then climbed in again.
"Better get along a few blocks and then leave it," he said. "It looks something fierce, and so do we."
And at that instant, before I could even start the engine, we were arrested for stealing the miserable thing!
"There is some mistake," Ferd said loftily, but looking green in the electric light. "This is Mrs. Day Illington and this is her own machine."
"Are you Mr. Illington?"
"Yes!" said Ferd.
The man looked very strange, as well he might, considering—well, considering the facts that came out later.
"I'll have to trouble you to come with me," he said, politely enough. "It will be only a short delay and we'll get this straightened out. But a car answering this description was stolen out the road a few miles and headed toward town, and there's a reward offered."
He stood on the step and I drove to the station house. I had it fixed in my own mind to go home and write a letter to Day confessing all, and then pack a few things and hide my wretched self for the rest of my life. I even planned what to take; my jewelry and my checkbook, and only a dinner dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day—in my mind—and one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, but it had gone wrong without any fault of mine. Then we drew up at the station.
Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned on the pavement to help me out. But it was my chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after me and then began shooting. One bullet must have struck the good rear tire, for it collapsed and almost turned the car round. But I was desperate. I never looked back. I just drove for all I was worth down the street to its end, and after that down other streets, and still others. All the time I was saying I would rather die, and going round corners on two wheels, or one wheel and a rim.
Finally I got into a part of town I knew and pulled up half a block from my own house. I recall that and leaving the engine still going, and that hideous
