“Your track isn’t fenced in—­ I have a right to cross it where I please.  If I had a wagon and it broke down, you would have no right to run into it.  The law might not hold you criminally liable, but it would hold you liable for the worth of the wagon and contents.

“Say, are you a lawyer?” queried Belright Fogg, curiously.

“No, but I know my rights,” returned Dick, promptly.

CHAPTER VI

 The missing biplane

For a moment there was silence.  The lawyer and the doctor who represented the railroad company looked from one to another of the Rover boys.

“Pretty shrewd, aren’t you?” said the lawyer, finally.

“We have to be—­ in dealing with a railroad company,” answered Dick, bluntly.  “Now let us get to business—­ if that is what you came for,” he continued.  “We might put in a big claim for damages, and I think a jury would sustain our claim.  But we want to do what is fair.  The question then is, Do you want to do what is fair?”

“Why, yes, of course,” returned Belright Fogg, but he did not say it very cordially.

“Very well then.  That flying machine cost us twenty-eight hundred dollars new and we have spent over two hundred dollars on improvements, so when she was smashed she was worth at least three thousand dollars.”

“But you can save something, can’t you?” gut in the lawyer.

“Perhaps we can save the engine, and a dealer in second-hand machinery may give a hundred dollars for it.  Now what I propose is this:  You pay for half the value of the biplane and we’ll call it square.”

“Preposterous!”

“Very well then, Mr. Fogg, we’ll consider the interview closed.”

“If you sue, you won’t get a cent, Mr. Rover.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“I am willing to give you five hundred dollars in place of the three hundred first offered.”

“No, sir—­ it is fifteen hundred or nothing, Mr. Fogg.”

“But you have not been hurt.”

“Yes, we have been hurt.  I have been to our college doctor about this lump on my head, and my brothers have been to him, too.  We were badly shaken up—­ not as much as my brother made out, but enough.  If we have to sue we’ll put in our claim for personal injuries as well—­ and maybe for time lost from our studies.”

“But fifteen hundred dollars!  I—­ er—­ I can’t see it,” and the lawyer began to pace the floor.

“Maybe we had better sue,” suggested Sam.  “We might get the full amount of our loss—­ three thousand for the Dartaway and some for our injuries.”

This did not suit the lawyer at all, for he had been instructed to settle if possible and thus avoid litigation, for the railroad authorities had heard that the Rovers were rich and might make the affair cost a good deal.

“I will—­ er—­ make my offer an even thousand dollars,” he said, after some more talk.  “But that is my limit.  If you won’t take that, you’ll get nothing.”