As good luck would have it, we were almost in front of a large, comfortable, old-fashioned house where they took summer boarders; as the season was drawing to a close, there was plenty of room and they were glad to take us in.  The machine was pushed into a shed, everybody assisting with the readiness ever characteristic of sympathetic on-lookers.

The big, clean, white rooms were most inviting; the homely New England supper of cold meats and hot rolls seemed under the circumstances a feast for a king, and as we sat in front of the house in the evening, and looked across the highway to a little lake just beyond and heard the croaking of the frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the many indistinguishable sounds of night, we were not sorry the machine had played us false exactly when and where it did.

The automobile plays into the hands of Morpheus, the drowsy god follows in its wake, sure of his victims.  No sleep is dreamless.  It is pretty difficult to exhaust the three billions of cells of the central nervous system so that all require rest, but ten hours on an automobile in the open air, speeding along like the wind most of the time, will come nearer putting all those cells to sleep than any exercise heretofore discovered.  The fatigue is normal, pervasive, and persuasive, and it is pretty hard to recall any dream on waking.

It was Sunday morning, September 1, and raining, a soft, drizzly downpour, that had evidently begun early in the night and kept up —­or rather down—­steadily.  It was a good morning to remain indoors and read; but there was that tantalizing machine challenging combat; then, too, Worcester was but eighteen or twenty miles away, and at Worcester we expected to find letters and telegrams.

A young and clever electrician across the way came over, bringing an electric bell, with which we tested the dry cells, finding them in good condition.  We then examined the connections and ran the trouble back to the coil.  There was plenty of current and plenty of voltage, but only a little blue spark, which could be obtained equally well with the coil in or out of the circuit, and yet the coil did not show a short circuit, but before we finished our tests the spark suddenly appeared.

Again, it would have been better to remain and find the trouble; but as there was no extra coil to be had in the village, it seemed fairly prudent to start on and get as far as possible.  Possibly the coil would hold out to Worcester; anyway, the road is a series of villages, some larger than Brookfield, and a coil might be found at one of them.

When within two miles of Spencer the spark gave out again; this time no amount of coaxing would bring it back, so there was nothing to do but appeal to a farmer for a pair of horses to pull the machine into his yard.  The assistance was most kindly given, though the day was Sunday, and for him, his men and his animals, emphatically a day of rest.