“How do I know you will bring it back?” I asked, stareing at him fixedly.

“Oh, now see here,” he said, straightening his necktie, “I may be a Theif, but I am not that kind of a Theif.  I play for big stakes or nothing.”

I then remembered that there was a large dinner that night and that mother would have her jewelery out from the safe deposit, and father’s pearl studs et cetera.  I turned pale, but he did not notice it, being busy counting out Twenty-five dollars in small bills.

I am one to think quickly, but with precicion.  So I said: 

“You can’t drive, can you?”

“I do drive, dear Little—­I beg your pardon.  And I think, with a lesson now, I could get along.  Now see here, Twenty-five dollars while you are asleep and therfore not gilty if I take your car from wherever you keep it.  I’ll leave it at the station and you’ll find it there in the morning.”

Is it surprizing that I agreed and that I took the filthy lucre?  No.  For I knew then that he would never get to the station, and the reward of two hundred, plus the Twenty-five, was already mine mentaly.

He learned to drive the Arab in but a short time, and I took him to the shed and showed him where I hid the key.  He said he had never heard before of a girl owning a Motor and her parents not knowing, and while we were talking there Tom Gray went by in the station hack and droped somthing in the road.

When I went out to look it was the key ring I had given him.

I knew then that all was over and that I was doomed to a single life, growing more and more meloncholy until Death releived my sufferings.  For I am of a proud nature, to proud to go to him and explain.  If he was one to judge me by apearances I was through.  But I ached.  Oh, how I ached!

The Theif did not go further that day, but returned to the station.  And I?  I was not idle, beleive me.  During the remainder of the day, although a broken thing, I experamented to find exactly how much gas it took to take the car from the station to our house.  As I could not go to the house I had to guess partly, but I have a good mind for estimations, and I found that two quarts would do it.

So he could come to the house or nearby, but he could not get away with his ill-gotten gains.  I therfore returned to my home and ate a nursery supper, and Hannah came in and said: 

“I’m about out of my mind, Miss Bab.  There’s trouble coming to this Familey, and it keeps on going to dinners and disregarding all hints.”

“What sort of trouble?”.  I asked, in a flutering voice.  For if she knew and told I would not recieve the reward, or not solely.

“I think you know,” she rejoined, in a suspicous tone.  “And that you should assist in such a thing, Miss Bab, is a great Surprize to me.  I have considered you flitey, but nothing more.”