In this connection it may as well be stated quite frankly that if Mr. Gouger had ever succeeded in detecting anything more than some small boys, whom he once caught filching cherries from his trees, the world at large had yet to learn of it. But perhaps that was the fault of people who might have employed him, but didn't. He always had said he never got half a chance in detective work, though he liked it ever so much better than the ice-cream business. Be this as it may, Mr. Gouger, private detective, had eagerly joined Marshal Wellock in his proposal that they pursue the four mysterious youths who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the marshal himself declared, had stolen the automobile in which they attracted so much attention in front of the telegraph office. In some respects the two officials were well matched. Mr. Gouger was considerably the younger, but his attire had the same appearance of needing renovating that marked the marshal's outfit. In their conclusions with regard to the absolute certainty that the young strangers were automobile thieves, and that probably a reward was offered somewhere for their arrest, the two were also quite identical. Even in their private and personal opinions of each other they did not differ greatly. Marshal Wellock secretly considered Mr. Gouger to be nothing more than a would-be private detective, whose gilded badge was worth about five cents as a novelty--nothing more. Eli, on the other hand, had long since reached within his own confidence the certain conviction that the town of Sagersgrove needed nothing so much as a new marshal; that Mr. Wellock was a conceited old loafer and nothing more, and that a man of about Eli Gouger's age should be in his place. The very fact that, in the recesses of their hearts, the two men had for each other a minus quantity in the matter of admiration, was to a degree responsible for the ignominious ending of their enterprise. Each secretly planning to reap the major portion of the glory, also the reward they persuaded themselves would follow the capture of the four desperate car thieves, they chugged painfully over the road the Auto Boys had taken. Darkness had come before they were fairly started. Now it was growing very late. "It's sure as shootin' that they stole the car. They never would have took such a road, except they was tryin' to sneak along where nobody would see 'em," observed Mr. Gouger. The going grew steadily worse. It was past midnight. The little runabout had been making a slow and trying voyage over the ruts and through the holes. Perhaps Marshal Wellock was weary. He certainly had become impatient. "Can't you get a little more speed out o' this junk wagon? Like ridin' in a stone-boat," he remarked pretty sharply, after a long silence in which he had reflected upon the probability that Mr. Gouger was "putting up some game" on him.