“That’s perfectly true,” she said, showing her white, even teeth.  “I think, Mr. Swift, I shall have to order you to take them.”

“All right,” agreed Tom, “only it’s too much for what I did.”

“It isn’t half enough,” remarked Mr. Duncan solemnly.  “Just explain matters to my wife, if you will, and tell her the doctor says I can be out in about a week.  But I’m not going hunting or practicing shots again.”

A little later Tom, with the compass before him to guide him on his course through the fog, was speeding his boat toward Waterford.  Now and then he glanced at the fine shotgun which he had so unexpectedly acquired.

“This will come in dandy this fall!” he exclaimed.  “I’ll go hunting quail and partridge as well as wild ducks.  This compass is just what I need, too.”

Mrs. Duncan was at first very much alarmed when Tom started to tell her of the accident, but she soon calmed down as the lad went more into details and stated how comparatively out of danger her husband now was.  The hunter’s wife insisted that Tom remain to dinner, and as he had made up his mind he would have to devote two days instead of one to the trip to his house, he consented.

The fog lifted that afternoon, and Tom, rejoicing in the sunlight, which drove away the storm clouds, speeded up the arrow until she was skimming over the lake like a shaft from a bow.

“This is something like,” he exclaimed.  “I’ll soon be at home, find everything all right and telephone to dad.  Then I’ll sleep in my own room and start back in the morning.”

When Tom was within a few miles of his own boathouse he heard behind him the “put-put” of a motor craft.  Turning, he saw the red streak fairly flying along at some distance from him.

“Andy certainly is getting the speed out of her now,” he remarked.  “He’d beat me if we were racing, but the trouble with his boat and engine is that he can’t always depend on it.  I guess he doesn’t understand how to run it.  I wonder if he’ll offer to race now?”

But the red-haired owner of the auto boat evidently did not intend to offer Tom a race.  The red streak went on down the lake, passing the arrow about half a mile away.  Then the young inventor saw that Andy had two other lads in the boat with him.

“Sam Snedecker and Pete Bailey, I guess,” he murmured.  “Well, they’re a trio pretty much alike.  The farther off they are the better I like it.”

Tom once more gave his attention to his own boat.  He was going at a fair speed, but not the limit, and he counted on reaching home in about a half hour.  Suddenly, when he was just congratulating himself on the smooth-running qualities of his motor, which had not missed an explosion, the machinery stopped.

“Hello!” exclaimed the young inventor in some alarm.  “What’s up now?”