“He got away from us!” cried Grace, voicing a rather self-evident fact.

“I’m afraid so, miss,” said the man, and he seemed so genuinely disappointed that they looked at him gratefully.  “The man must be rather much of a dare-devil, your criminal,” he added, eyeing the bumpy path thoughtfully.  “An ordinary rider wouldn’t be able to go two yards along that path without coming to grief.”

“Do you know where this path leads to?” asked Betty, struck with a sudden inspiration.  “If there’s another road we might circle round and head him off.”

“Sorry, miss,” he said, “but the road that path leads to is nothing but a wagon road, and we’d have to go several miles before we’d cross it.  And the chances are,” he added, “that the fellow would double back upon himself and we’d have the run for nothing.”

Betty shook her head resignedly, for, hard as it was to relinquish the man, all that the chauffeur had said was founded on hard common sense and she could see there was no alternative.

“I guess you’re right,” she said at last, after a pause during which the girls had looked at her hopefully.  Betty so often found a way where no one else could that they never completely gave up hope until she herself relinquished it.

So now they sighed and climbed soberly back into the machine.

“Where to?” inquired the chauffeur, as he turned the car and headed back the way they had come.  “If you’re going back to the camp,” he suggested, “I can take you there.  Or anywhere you say.”

“You’ve been awfully good,” cried Betty, with real gratitude in her voice.  “But you don’t have to take us away back to camp.  If you will drop us at the end of the road we can walk back.”  All this despite sundry vigorous and desperate shakings of Grace’s head and pantomimic pointings toward her feet.  At the conclusion of Betty’s sentence she groaned, but brightened up again at the chauffeur’s response.

“It won’t be any trouble,” he said, “to take you all the way back to camp.  In fact”—­a little shyly—­“I’d like to.”

“Then we’d be very, very glad to accept,” said Betty cordially.  “For we have walked a long way and are rather tired.”

At the gates of Camp Liberty they got out of the car, thanked the chauffeur, and while they were hesitating whether or not to offer him money for his trouble, the latter turned the car and, with a last lifting of his cap and waving of his hand, was gone.

“Isn’t he nice?” sighed Amy, as they started toward the Hostess House, Grace limping a little and bringing up the rear.  “Meeting a man like that gives you new faith in human nature.”

“Goodness, Will had better look out,” chaffed Mollie, a little gleam of humor shining through her weariness.  “I always thought you had it in you to run off with a chauffeur, Amy.”

Before Amy had time to retort they saw a stalwart and familiar figure swinging toward them and recognized Sergeant Mullins.