For mile upon mile the Auto Boys' route was bordered by rich pastures, waving meadows and the cultivated fields of a fine farming country. The wheat was coming into head. The oats marked the long, parallel lines of the drills like millions of tiny soldiers in green uniforms massed regiment upon regiment. Farmers, their sons and their hired men were busy with cultivators and with hoes in many a field where the young corn was starting off vigorously, as if having particularly in mind that growth expected of every good corn field, "knee high by Fourth of July," and meant to establish a new record. Surely there's nothing to equal motoring as a means of seeing the country. Not only are the constant change of landscape and constant succession of new scenes which the railway traveler may enjoy, to be had in an automobile but more--very much more. The motorist gains a great deal that the railroad passenger inevitably misses. For the man on the train the musical clang of the dinner bell as one passes near some farmhouse, for instance, is lost--swallowed up in the noise and rush of the locomotive. The sweet scent of the wild crab apple can never make its presence known in the skurrying currents of air sweeping constantly aside from and after the wheels of steel. And these are but samples of countless impressions upon the senses the automobile tourist experiences, which he who journeys by rail may meet only by rare chance. The difference is vast. The Auto Boys discussed the subject with keen appreciation of their good fortune in owning a machine. "Why!" said Billy Worth, "it amounts to the same thing as the difference between pictures and actual life. You can lay eyes on a scene like that young fellow plowing, over yonder, say, in any art store. You can see the green of the grass and the brown of the ploughed land. See the trees and the old rail fence in the background and the team of horses and the driver. But it doesn't mean anything like as much as when you can at the same time catch that smell of the ground just turned over and hear that hired man calling out to his team. Hear him? Hear that chap yonder, now?" And through the air, rich with the fragrance of the freshly ploughed earth came in lusty tones: "Ha-a-a-aw! Haw, there! Molly! You great big haystack, why don't you ha-a-w?" Certainly Billy was right. CHAPTER IX THE CRAFTY PLAN OF MR. GOUGER The late afternoon sun shone with a softened light in the valley through which Wolf creek flowed dark and sluggish from the Ship woods. The stream itself looked very dark, indeed, where the shadows of the trees lay on the deeper pools. Where the sunbeams struck the ripples the water had a brighter, clearer hue and tinkled sweetly, soft and low, for the current was moderate.