wheels off the ground. Judge Wiggin’s hat flew off, his sparse gray hair stood on end, his eyes bulged; but between his parted, drawn-back lips his teeth were set. Behind him he heard the horrified shouts of the crowd, through which Hitchens had vainly tried to plow a path in time to board the machine before it could get beyond his reach. Realizing he had failed, Hitchens stopped and flung up his arms in despair.

“The old fool!” he groaned. “He’ll smash the car! He’ll be killed!”

 CHAPTER VIIIWORSE THAN A WILD HORSE. 

CHAPTER VIII

Annoyed and amazed by the inexplicable and cantankerous behavior of the automobile, Nathan Wiggin was, at the same time, aroused to resentment and wrath. The confounded thing was acting exactly like a wild, viciously ugly, unbroken colt. Immediately the judge’s fighting blood rose. He was stirred by the tingling joy of contest; it throbbed in every vein of his body. Still holding the throttle wide open with one foot, he planted the other on the brake, and sawed at the wheel.

The things the automobile did then made it seem more than ever like a strong and furious young horse battling against restraint and mastery. It bucked and plunged in jerky jumps; it “pitched fence-cornered” from side to side, after the style of a Western broncho; it snorted and choked and snorted again.

“Whoa, you dratted catamaran!” snarled the judge. “You’ve gotter whoa or I’ll take your jaw off!”

Only for the down grade he might have stalled the engine before the racking of the car caused his foot to fly off the brake pedal. When that happened, it continued on its way down the hill toward the wooden bridge that spanned the Swampscott River, swaying from one side of the road to the other. At times it threatened to climb trees or telephone poles, or crash through fences and plunge like a battering-ram into the fronts of houses or stores. But always the crazy machine swerved in time to avoid disaster, and shot across to the other side of the road.

When his right hand slipped from the wheel, the judge grabbed the side of the car body, and his clutching thumb jammed down the button that operated the electric siren. The button stuck, and the siren howled like a doomed demon of despair, causing Nathan Wiggin’s hair to stand up stiff as the bristles on a horse brush.

The fearsome sound of the wailing whistle brought people running to windows to behold a sight no 

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