Livermore began a mile farther along with an outlying sprinkle of small farms on the left of the river. These gave place to little houses set in tiny gardens and then to more ambitious residences. They caught the yellow gleam of a hurrying trolley car and heard its strident hum as it charged at a grade and went lurching out of sight behind the maples that lined the street. Harmon watched with intense interest, trolley cars being a novelty to him. A quarter of a mile of brick mill buildings marched beside them and the big steel bridge suddenly swept into sight around a bend of the stream. The river widened appreciably hereabouts and a long, pebbly island, decked with a few forlorn trees, divided the current. Pud, at the wheel now, chose the right-hand channel, slowing down the engine to a point where it coughed incessantly, but survived the secret malady. There was so much to see now――for Livermore boasted of a population of seventeen thousand and was a manufacturing town of some importance――that the three boys almost stared the eyes out of their heads. Harmon ejaculated ‘Lawsey!’ and ‘My golly’ at quite regular intervals. One thing that became plain long before the bridge was reached was that Pud’s suggestion of camping thereabouts was not at all practical. The only place they could have pitched the tent would have been on some wharf! ‘Guess we’ll have to go on by the town,’ said Pud. ‘I didn’t know it was all built-up like this!’ ‘Thought you said you’d been here,’ said Tim. ‘So I did and so I have.’ ‘Gosh, then I should think――’ ‘Well, it was quite a long time ago,’ explained Pud; ‘when I was about eight or nine. You see, Great-Aunt Sabrina lives over on the other side of town, and we don’t usually get around here. I guess it’s grown up a lot since I was here!’ ‘Your aunt at home now?’ asked Tim, after a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose so. She don’t go about much. She’s sort of old.’ He turned hard aport to keep out of the way of a snorting tugboat that backed suddenly out from behind a pier. ‘Well,’ began Tim, after another brief silence. But Pud interrupted, pointing to a conspicuous sign that adorned the end of a brick-red shed just ahead. ‘Say, I guess we’d ought to have some more gasoline, eh?’ he asked. ‘We didn’t have but thirty gallons when we started.’ ‘Well, gosh, I guess we ain’t used any thirty gallons,’ demurred Tim. But Pud was already negotiating the landing. ‘You, Harmon, you get up here and fend off,’ he ordered. ‘Keep her like that, Tim.’ He went to the engine, anxiously watching the pier bear down upon them, and finally pushed the clutch forward. There was a fine churning under the stern, and Harmon’s bare feet set themselves against the stringpiece and the _Jolly Rodger_, formerly the _Kismet_, sidled up to her berth. If the gasoline station had been on the other side of the river, the launch’s name would have been the _Vengance_, of course.