’Tis better to have loved and lost
     Than never to have loved at all.

This is the tradgic story.  Tom had gone to the station, feeling repentant probably, or perhaps wishing to drive the Arab, and finding me not yet there, had conversed with the hackman.  And that person, for whom I have nothing but contempt and scorn, had observed to him that every day I met a young gentleman at the three-thirty train and took him for a ride!

Could Mendasity do more?  Is it right that such a Creature, with his pockets full of nails and scandle, should vote, while intellagent women remain idle?  I think not.

When, therefore, I waved my hand to my fiancee, thus showing a forgiving disposition, I was met but with a cold bow.  I was heart-broken, but it is but to true that in our state of society the female must not make advanses, but must remain still, although suffering.  I therfore sat still and stared hautily at the water cap of my car, although seathing within, but without knowing the cause of our rupture.

The Stranger came.  I shrink in retrospect from calling him the Theif, although correct in one sense.  I saw Tom stareing at him banefully, but I took no notice, merely getting out and kicking the tires to see if air enough in them.  I then got in and drove away.

The Stranger looked excited, and did not mention the weather as customery.  But at last he said: 

“Somehow I gather, Little Sister, that you know a lot of things you do not talk about.”

“I do not care to be adressed as `Little Sister,’” I said in an icy tone.  “As for talking, I do not interfere with what is not my concern.”

“Good,” he observed.  “And I take it that, when you find an overcoat or any such garment, you do not exhibit it to the Familey, but put it away in some secluded nook.  Eh, what?”

“No one has seen it.  It is in the Car now, under that rug.”

He turned and looked at me intently.

“Do you know,” he observed, “my admiration for you is posatively beyond words!”

“Then don’t talk,” I said, feeling still anguished by Tom’s conduct and not caring much just then about the reward or any such mundane matters.

“But I must talk,” he replied.  “I have a little plan, which I darsay you have guest.  As a matter of fact, I have reasons to think it will fall in with—­er—­plans of your own.”

Ye gods!  Was I thus being asked to compound a felony?  Or did he not think I belonged to my own Familey, but to some other of the same name, and was therfore not suspicous.

“Here’s what I want,” he went on in a smooth manner.  “And there’s Twenty-five dollars in it for you.  I want this little car of yours tonight.”

Here I almost ran into a cow, but was luckaly saved, as a Jersey cow costs seventy-five dollars and even more, depending on how much milk given daily.  When back on the road again, having but bent a mud guard against a fense, I was calmer.