“Yump, sure’s got something to do with a plot against Priest and the _Hustle_,” Hike continued in his thinking. “Well, there’s nothing to do but wait. Maybe I’ll get a chance at a shindy, bimeby, if I act peaceful, and make ’em think I’m scared. Oh, and a peach of a shindy it’ll be if I get the chance to bash the fat head of the kind gentleman that put this muffler on me. And if Cap’n Wibbelty-Wobbelty has anything to do with this—and I’ve got a funny hunch he has—I hope I’m in at his finish. You bet. ’Fact, I hope I _am_ his finish. I remember Dad used to say the Cap’n had ‘finished manners.’ They’ll sure be finished if he’s had anything—if he’s—he will—” Hike Griffin was going to sleep! In those few days of terrific strain in driving the _Hustle_, he had learned that there was nothing that was quite so useless as worrying. Even when things were not going well, it was up to him to wait till he could get the _Hustle_ into a calmer current of air. Well, all right then, he’d have to wait; and rest his nerves till the time when there was something he could do. So now he let himself go to sleep—which he did the more quickly in the close air of the folds of the cloak. He woke once, to wonder if any policeman had noticed the curious stopping of the four-wheeler on the Aqueduct Bridge. He had a funny little picture of Poodle, dressed as a policeman, riding an aerial motorcycle, stopping the _Hustle_ for speeding, and then changing into a general and conducting a large brass band. This last sound was caused by the ringing in his ears.... He seemed to be choking.... He tried to pull at the cloak. Then, some one was loosening it a little, so that he could breathe. He fell asleep again. Once more he awoke. He was being carried out of the four-wheeler, and, apparently, placed in a wagon, and covered with something that smelled as though it might be hay. Then this wagon—if that was what it was—went jolting off. He heard it dully, drowsily. After what may have been any number of hours, Hike really woke up. The cloak had been removed from his eyes. It was now night. He was lying in front of a door, dimly seen by a small lantern; a rough door of unpainted pine. Judging from the way he could look down and see starry sky, he was on a hill. Though he still kept his nerve, Hike had never been so confused in his life as he was then. Where was he? Why had he been taken there? Who were his captors? What did they want? A thousand questions were pounding away inside his sorely aching head, even while he drew in deep delightful breaths of fresh air.