they’d have sent you out on a shinin’ new one?”

“What countries have you ridden through?” queried a vinegary woman in spectacles. “I do hope you’ve been through Tibet. But if you have, the natives did’t treat ye as bad as they do some folks. I’ve got some real good buttermilk, and if you’d like to drop into my house a minute to rest and tell me about Tibet I’d take it kindly. I’m so interested readin’ ’bout Tibet that I can’t hardly sleep o’ night sometimes. It’s the first house on the corner as you go down—a little white house with green winder-blinds.”

Starbright was in a profuse perspiration.

“Thank you!” he said. “You’re very kind. But I must really hurry on. I’ve stopped too long now.”

Then, feeling that the only way to get away from these people was to mount his wheel, he hopped on it and fled through the village, giving a glance at the little white house with the green blinds as he swept by, and thinking that perhaps the proper thing would have been to stop there and talk Tibet to the inquisitive, spectacled lady and sip her buttermilk while he thought out some plan for outwitting his tormentors.

“This is Ready’s work!” he panted, as he wheeled down the road. “I’ll have to murder that fellow! I see there is no help for it! I shall have to take him between my two thumbs and squash his life out as I would any common bug!”

He tried to smile when the village was behind him.

“It’s a good joke, anyway, and it’s on your Uncle Richard! Of course, the whole college knows of it now, and New Haven will know it before night. Heavens! If it should get into the newspapers!”

Dick wheeled on so fast, hardly knowing now that he was speeding, that he found himself approaching the next little village almost before he thought it possible. He saw the inevitable crowd gathered on the principal corner of the street, through which he must pass unless he elected to make a wide détour and avoid the village altogether. Some boys raised a cheer as he drew near, swinging their hats with an urchin’s delight.

“I’ll not stop!” Dick grunted, shrinking from the thought of again encountering some one who would ask him about his world-wide travels. “They’ll want to know if I’ve been in China, likely, and if I’ve fought the Boxers, and how many I’ve killed!”

So he put on extra speed, lowered his visored cap, bent over the handle-bars, and went through the 

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