To follow the side streets to the city's outskirts, and avoid every thoroughfare that looked like a principal artery of the town, was Pickton's plan. For some distance he put on great speed, but later heeded Perth's suggestion to go more slowly and so attract less notice. And as even moderate driving would take one from center to circumference of Sagersgrove in no great length of time, the Roadster was well into the country within a quarter of an hour. But on and on Pickton hurried. Whither he went he cared not, nor looked to see where he might turn to left or right. He wanted only to leave behind as far as possible the pursuers he believed would certainly be coming on. "We'll be at the south pole sooner than the Queensville race course at this rate," Freddy Perth shouted, at last. "Head down the first likely looking road west. Great guns! Things aren't so desperate as all this!" Soapy Gaines, still bearing noticeable evidence in his hair and on his clothing of his plunge from the window, but now able to see as usual, vehemently acquiesced in Perth's suggestion. "Never saw a man lose his head so!" he growled, with reference to Pickton's frantic haste, regardless of direction. "We're after that Phil Way outfit, don't you know it! Catch 'em about next year! Sagersgrove is where we were going to get right behind 'em on the old pike!" "A few miles west, then on the first thing that looks like a road, due north, and we'll come to the pike," suggested Fred, more pleasantly. "We can't help but recognize it, and the paper said Way's crowd took that route. Keep a-going. If we don't stop for noon we won't have lost much time, after all." The still frightened travelers reached their looked-for road to the west a mile further on. Often they had looked back, but now they paused and scrutinized carefully the distant horizon in the direction they had come. An old black horse and buckboard and a small boy in charge of that conveyance, which they had passed a few minutes before, were the only objects in sight along the dusty, sunny road. Over in the pasture on the right, some cows were feeding. In the wood lot on the left silence reigned save for the vagrant breeze faintly rustling the leaves. From a farmyard further down the road came indistinctly the cackling of a hen in token of a new laid egg added to the world's food supply; but for aught else within view or hearing the three lads might have been the sole inhabitants of the country.