The boys had a lantern with them and with this they looked for the damage done.  Tom’s guess proved correct—­ the back axle had given way close to the left wheel.

“What’s to be done now?” asked Sam, in some dismay.  “Say, I don’t think that was my fault,” he added, quickly.

“I told you to be careful,” returned Dick.  “Now we are in a pickle and no mistake.”

“If we had a wire we might bind up that axle,” said Tom, looking at the fracture, which was in the form of a long split.

“But we haven’t any,” said Dick.  He looked into the carriage.  “Nothing here but the hitching strap and I don’t think that will do.”

“There is a farmhouse,” said Sam, pointing to a light in a nearby field.  “Maybe I can get help there.”

“We’ll see,” said Dick.  “Just draw up alongside the fence—­ so that nobody will run into the carriage.  Now that the main road is shut off, everybody has to use this one.”

Soon the carriage was safe by the roadside, and then the three Rovers hurried to where the light gleamed from the kitchen windows of a small farmhouse.  Dick knocked on the door of the place.

There was a stir from within, and then the door was opened, revealing an old man, who held a lighted lamp in his trembling hand.

“Who be yeou?” he drawled.

“We have had a breakdown on the road,” answered Dick.  “We thought we might get some help here.”

“A breakdown, eh?  What sort?” And the old man gazed curiously at the boys.

In a few brief words the Rovers explained matters.

“If you can let us have some wire, or straps, we’ll pay you for them,” went on Dick.

“I hain’t got much,” replied the old man.  “I’m poor, I am—­ with havin’ sech rheumatism I can’t work the farm.  But yeou kin look in the barn an’ see wot there is.”

The boys waited to hear no more, but hurried to the structure indicated—­ a building all but ready to fall down.  In a harness closet they found a few old straps and a coil of fence wire.

“I guess these will answer,” said Dick.

“Anyway, let us try them.  Sam, you go back and pay the old man whatever he wants, while Tom and I do the mending.”

“All right,” answered the youngest Rover, and hurried off in the direction of the farm-house.

Sam found the old man sitting by a small table, eating a frugal meal of beans and bread and coffee.

“We found three old straps and some fence wire,” said the youth.  “What do you suppose they are worth?”

“Well, I’m a poor man, I be,” whined the old man.  “I don’t think yeou be goin’ to rob a poor, old man.”

“Not at all,” answered Sam, kindly.  “How much do you want?”

“Them tudder fellers wot had a breakdown give me a dollar fer wot they got,” said the old man, shrewdly.

“If I give you a dollar, will that be all right?”

“I guess so,” answered the old man.  He knew what three straps and what wire were meant, and knew they were not worth half the amount offered.