It was not an expensive car, but it was new and shining, and had a perky snub-nosed air of being ready for anything.  It belonged to the genial gentleman who used it without mercy, and thus the little car wove back and forth over the hills like a shuttle, doing its work sturdily, coming home somewhat noisily, and even at rest, seeming to ask for something more to do.

The genial gentleman was very proud of his car.  He talked a great deal about it to Randy, and on this particular morning when he came out and found young Paine sitting on a wheelbarrow with Nellie Custis lending him a cocked ear, he grew eloquent.

“Look here, I’ve been thinking.  There ought to be a lot of cars like this in the county.”

To Randy the enthusiasms of the genial gentleman were a constant source of amazement.  He was always wanting the world to be glad about something.  Randy felt that at this moment any assumption of gladness would be a hollow mockery.

“Any man,” said the genial gentleman, rubbing a cloth over the enamel of the little car, “any man who would start selling this machine down here would make a fortune.”

Randy pricked up his ears.

“How could he make a fortune?”

“Selling cars.  Why, the babies cry for them——­” he chuckled and rubbed harder.

“How much could he make?” Randy found himself saying.

The genial gentleman named a sum, “Easy.”

Randy got up from the wheelbarrow and came over.  “Is she really as good as that?”

“Is she really?  Oh, say——­” the genial gentleman for the next ten minutes dealt in superlatives.

Towards the end, Randy was firing questions at him.

“Could I own a car while I was selling them?”

“Sure—­they’d let you have it on installments to be paid for out of your commissions——­”

“And I’d have an open field?”

“My dear boy, in a month you could have cars like this running up and down the hills like ants after sugar.  They speak for themselves, and they are cheap enough for anybody.”

“But it is a horse-riding country, especially back in the hills.  They love horse-flesh, you know.”

“Oh, they’ll get the gasoline bug like the rest of us,” said the genial gentleman and slapped him on the back.

Randy winced.  He did not like to be slapped on the back.  Not at a moment—­when he was selling his soul to the devil——­

For that was the way he looked at it.

“I shall have to perjure myself,” he said to Major Prime later, as they talked it over in the Schoolhouse, “to go through the country telling mine own people to sell their horses and get cars.”

“If you don’t do it, somebody else will.”

“But a man can’t be convincing if he doesn’t believe in a thing.”

“No, of course.  But you’ve got to look at it this way, the world moves, and horses haven’t had an easy time.  Perhaps it is their moment of emancipation.  And just for the sake of a sentiment, a tradition, you can’t afford to hold back.”