In the center of the road, quite oblivious to the oncoming automobile, was an odd figure, that of a small man in a rusty, baggy suit of black.

He had a hammer in his hand and was hitting some object in the roadway over which he was bending with a concentrated interest that made him quite unconscious of the onrushing car.

“Hi!  Get out of the way!” yelled the boys.

But the man did not look up.  Instead, he kept tapping away with his hammer at whatever it was that absorbed his attention so intently.

CHAPTER II.

An encounter with A “Character.”

Jack jammed down the emergency brakes, which were pneumatic and operated from the pressure tank, with a suddenness that sent Dick Donovan almost catapulting out of the tonneau.

“Jumping jiggers of Joppa!” he shouted, for he had not yet seen the obstacle in the road, “what’s happened?  Are we bust up?”

“No, but if I hadn’t stopped when I did we’d have bust someone else up,” declared Jack.  “Look there!”

“Can you beat it?” exclaimed Tom.

As the brakes brought the car to a stop within a foot of his stout, rotund figure, the little man in the center of the road looked up with a sort of mild surprise through a pair of astonishingly thick-lensed eyeglasses secured to his ears by a thick, black ribbon.  He wore a broad-brimmed black hat and wrinkled, baggy clothes of bar-cloth, and a huge pair of square-toed boots that looked as if their tips had been chopped off with an ax.

Over his shoulder was slung a canvas bag which appeared to be heavy and bulged as if several irregularly shaped, solid substances were inside of it.  The spot where this odd encounter took place was some distance from any town, but a bicycle leaning against a tree at the roadside showed how the little man had got there.

“Say, would you mind letting us get by?” asked Jack.

The little man raised a hand protestingly.

“I’ll be delighted to in just a moment,” he said, “but just now it’s impossible.  You see, I’ve just discovered a vein of what I believe to be Laurentian granite running across the road.  I am trying to trace it and—­what’s that?  Good gracious!  Back up your machine, please.  I believe it runs under your wheel.  I must make sure.”

Jack obligingly threw in the reverse to humor the little man, who darted forward and began scraping up the dust in the road with his hands as if he had been a dog scratching out a rabbit hole.  He began chipping away eagerly with his hammer at some rock that cropped up out of the road.

He broke off a piece with his hammer, which was an oddly shaped tool, and drawing out a big magnifying glass scanned the chip intently.  He appeared to have forgotten all about the waiting boys.  But now he seemed to remember them.  He looked up, beaming.