"They're going to go soon, if they go at all. Likely would have started to-day, as MacLester said, if their machine hadn't played out," said Tom Pickton, when on this Monday evening he and Perth were leaving Gaines at his home. "We'll watch 'em to-morrow, all right!" declared Mr. Pickton earnestly. And now if Pick is as good as his word, if he and his fellow conspirators are really watching the Auto Boys, as another day comes, it is an interesting and busy scene that falls upon their gaze. Phil Way is looking over every part of the Thirty's oiling system. "It's too bad we had to put the faithful old machine in the humiliating plight of being towed in, even if there never was a thing the matter with her," says he. "And you ought to've seen Phil! Never saw him appear so broken up! Honest, I just hurt from holding in when the three of them drove by us, as if they thought they were 'it,' hollering out, 'Give ye a lift?' in that sarcastic way of Pick's! And when they were 'way past, maybe I didn't laugh!" Paul Jones was the speaker, strapping a suitcase to the car's running board as he talked. Billy Worth and Dave MacLester were occupied in the rearrangement of a lot of other baggage, the canvas of a tent among the rest, in the tonneau. The car stood just outside a large frame building in the rear of the Yorkshire House, the principal hotel of Littleton. A combined livery stable and garage was this frame structure, if one judged by appearances, for it housed both horse-drawn vehicles and automobiles. Of the latter there were three--two runabouts and a light touring car. The Auto Boys' machine appeared to have been kept here over night. By their further conversation it was evident, too, that the young gentlemen themselves had remained over night in the Yorkshire House, and into that hostelry they repaired a few minutes later for an exceptionally early breakfast. "Too early for any earthly use. I don't see no sense in it," the not fastidiously tidy cook of the establishment stated at least five or six times to the maid who waited on table; and who, it may be added, quite agreed with him until she found a nickel tied in the corner of each napkin after the very early guests had left. As a matter of fact, it was exactly five o'clock. And now again, if Mr. Thomas Pickton, still sound asleep in his bed at home, had been watching the Auto Boys, as he had stated would be faithfully done to-day, he would have saved himself and friends a rather humiliating disappointment at a later time. But, as has also been plainly indicated, Pick, with all his hawk-like eyes, saw nothing of what was taking place, and as Freddy Perth and Soapy Gaines were not a whit more wide awake than he at this hour of five A. M., the well-laden Thirty with its four owners aboard purred merrily westward, farther and farther from the small town of appropriate name, and farther yet from Lannington.