Brother Sam sighed, and seated himself on a rock.

“Do you think, Billy,” he asked, “you can get us to Cambridge in time for next year’s game?”

The car limped into Stamford, and while it went into drydock at the garage, Brother Sam fled to the railroad station, where he learned that for the next two hours no train that recognized New Haven spoke to Stamford.

“That being so,” said Winthrop, “while we are waiting for the car, we had better get a quick lunch now, and then push on.”

“Push,” exclaimed Brother Sam darkly, “is what we are likely to do.”

After behaving with perfect propriety for half an hour, just outside of Bridgeport the Scarlet Car came to a slow and sullen stop, and once more the owner and the chauffeur hid their shame beneath it, and attacked its vitals.  Twenty minutes later, while they still were at work, there approached from Bridgeport a young man in a buggy.  When he saw the mass of college colors on the Scarlet Car, he pulled his horse down to a walk, and as he passed raised his hat.

“At the end of the first half,” he said, “the score was a tie.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Brother Sam.

“Now,” he cried, “we’ve got to turn back, and make for New York.  If we start quick, we may get there ahead of the last car to leave New Haven.”

“I am going to New Haven, and in this car,” declared his sister.  “I must go—­to meet Ernest.”

“If Ernest has as much sense as he showed this morning,” returned her affectionate brother, “Ernest will go to his Pullman and stay there.  As I told you, the only sure way to get anywhere is by railroad train.”

When they passed through Bridgeport it was so late that the electric lights of Fairview Avenue were just beginning to sputter and glow in the twilight, and as they came along the shore road into New Haven, the first car out of New Haven in the race back to New York leaped at them with siren shrieks of warning, and dancing, dazzling eyes.  It passed like a thing driven by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and whirling wheels.  And behind these, stretching for a twisted mile, came hundreds of others; until the road was aflame with flashing Will-o’-the-wisps, dancing fireballs, and long, shifting shafts of light.

Miss Forbes sat in front, beside Winthrop, and it pleased her to imagine, as they bent forward, peering into the night, that together they were facing so many fiery dragons, speeding to give them battle, to grind them under their wheels.  She felt the elation of great speed, of imminent danger.  Her blood tingled with the air from the wind-swept harbor, with the rush of the great engines, as by a handbreadth they plunged past her.  She knew they were driven by men and half-grown boys, joyous with victory, piqued by defeat, reckless by one touch too much of liquor, and that the young man at her side was driving, not only for himself, but for them.