[Pg 17]

[Pg 17]

CHAPTER III

A NEW FRIEND

“I’VE MADE IT!” PANTED BEN HARDY.

“I’ve made it!” panted Ben Hardy, with a swing landing both feet safely on the platform of the last car of the speeding train.

“Now to find my man,” he added, pausing a moment or two to catch his breath and then entering the coach.

Ben had the name of the man well in mind to whom he was to deliver the machine parts. He also recalled the vague description given of the man by Mr. Saxton. The lad glanced casually at the occupants of the seats on each side of the coach as he proceeded down the aisle of the car.

No tall bearded man with eye glasses showed up, and gaining the front platform of the coach Ben took up the package where it had landed and entered the next car.

“Fare, there,” pronounced the conductor of the train, confronting him.

“Oh, yes,” said Ben with a smile, resting his package on a radiator and producing the quarter Mr.[Pg 18] Saxton had given him. “Ought to keep it to frame as a souvenir, I suppose,” added Ben to himself comically, “but it happens to be all the money I’ve got. First stop, conductor—the junction, isn’t it?”

[Pg 18]

“Yes.”

“I’ll go that far. Take fifteen cents out of that,” directed Ben, producing the reward coin.

“It’s twenty-five cents if you don’t have a ticket,” announced the conductor, “ten cents extra, that’s the rule.”

“That’s so,” said Ben with a wry grimace.

“You’d ought to have thought of that,” suggested the conductor.

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