The little white figure had climbed the bank into the highway and was now fleeing down the road to meet her friend Miss Elting.  Tommy did not see the automobile approaching from the rear.  A knoll and a bend in the road hid the driver of the car and the little white figure from each other.  The noise of the train either drowned that of the automobile, or else, Grace thought the rumble made by the car to be that made by the train that had just passed down the valley.

The motor car roared around the bend.  Miss Elting screamed as she saw it.  Grace heard the scream, but failing to understand the meaning of it, decided it to be some sort of greeting.  The little girl waved her arms in reply.  Miss Elting was gesticulating and pointing frantically.  The two girls on the hillside were for the moment paralyzed with fright.

All at once, Grace appeared to perceive her danger.  She turned sharply.  There she stood, her frightened face turned toward the oncoming car that was rapidly approaching her enveloped in a blinding cloud of dust.  The driver and Tommy discovered each other at about the same instant.  There was no time to stop the car.

Suddenly, car and Tommy were swallowed up in the dust cloud.

“Grace is killed!” screamed Margery.

“Yes, oh yes!” wailed Hazel, wringing her hands.  “What shall we do?”

Out of the dust cloud hurtled the little white figure.  She appeared to have been doubled up into a large white ball by the car when it struck her.

The ball rolled from the road, disappearing into the roadside ditch.  The motor car lurched around the curve in the road, zig-zagged past Miss Elting, then became a rolling cloud of dust again.

CHAPTER II

WHAT HAPPENED TO TOMMY

“Oh-h-h!” moaned Margery.  “Poor Tommy has been killed.”

In that terrible moment Hazel Holland came nearer to fainting than ever before in her life.  She pulled herself sharply together.  Margery was by this time sobbing hysterically.

“Don’t do that,” commanded Hazel sharply, “We must do something.  Come quickly!”

Hazel started down the hillside in the trail followed by Tommy during her break-neck sprint to meet Miss Elting.  The latter was already running toward the scene of the accident.  Hazel recalled afterwards having wondered at the time that a woman could run so fast.  Miss Elting’s feet seemed barely to touch the ground.  Margery, mustering her courage, staggered to her feet and followed Hazel at a slower pace, though she, too, was running.

Hazel was the first to reach the place where Grace had been hurled from the highway by the car.

“Grace!” she screamed, clambering awkwardly over the fence, dropping down on the road side.  “Oh, Grace, are you killed?”

A pale-faced girl was sitting at the bottom of the dry ditch with both feet tucked under her.  There was a bewildered look on her small face.  She was blinking dazedly.