They slid down, and little by little the scenery disappeared; they were common mortals, back on earth. The curves broadened out, they left the last shoulder of the last hill, and before them was a long, straight descent; the wind began to whistle, and the figures to creep past the red line on the speedometer. They were making up for lost time. Whee! How the trees and telegraph poles went whizzing! Sixty miles now; some people might have been scared, but no sensible person would be scared while Dad was at the wheel. But suddenly the car began to slow up; you could feel yourself sliding forward in your seat, and the little red line showed fifty, forty, thirty. The road lay straight ahead, there was no other car in sight, yet Dad’s foot was on the brake. The boy looked up inquiringly. “Sit still,” said the man. “Don’t look round. A speed-trap!” Oho! An adventure to make a boy’s heart jump! He wanted to look and see, but understood that he must sit rigid, staring out in front, utterly innocent. They had never driven any faster than thirty miles per hour in their lives, and if any traffic-officer thought he had seen them coming faster down the grade, that was purely an optical delusion, the natural error of a man whose occupation destroyed his faith in human nature. Yes, it must be a dreadful thing to be a “speed-cop”, and have the whole human race for your enemy! To stoop to disreputable actions—hiding yourself in bushes, holding a stop-watch in hand, and with a confederate at a certain measured distance down the road, also holding a stop-watch, and with a telephone line connecting the two of them, so they could keep tab on motorists who passed! They had even invented a device of mirrors, which could be set up by the roadside, so that one man could get the flash of a car as it passed, and keep the time. This was a trouble the motorist had to keep incessant watch for; at the slightest sign of anything suspicious, he must slow up quickly—and yet not too quickly—no, just a natural slowing, such as any man would employ if he should discover that he had accidentally, for the briefest moment, exceeded ever so slightly the limits of complete safety in driving. “That fellow will be following us,” said Dad. He had a little mirror mounted in front of his eyes, so that he could keep tab on such enemies of the human race; but the boy could not see into the mirror, so he had to sit on pins and needles, missing the fun. “Do you see anything?” “No, not yet; but he’ll come; he knows we were speeding. He puts himself on that straight grade, because everybody goes fast at such a place.” There you saw the debased nature of the “speed-cop”! He chose a spot where it was perfectly safe to go fast, and where he knew that everyone would be impatient, having been held in so long by the curves up in the mountains, and by the wet roads! That was how much they cared for fair play, those “speed-cops”!