She lifted her eyes to the road ahead and lo, a big car was bearing down upon them! She had almost despaired of meeting any more, for the road was growing more and more lonely and they must have come many miles. As soon as the two men in front of her sighted the car, they seemed to settle in their seats and draw their hats down a little farther over their eyes. The same trouble seemed to develop with the machinery at their feet that Shirley had noticed before, and they bobbed and ducked and seemed to be wholly engrossed with their own affairs. Shirley's heart was beating so fast that it seemed as though it would suffocate her, and her hand seemed powerless as it lay innocently holding the closed book with the knotted handkerchief turned down out of sight; but she was girding herself, nerving herself for one great last effort, and praying to be guided. The big car came on swiftly and was about to pass, when Shirley half rose and hurled her book straight at it and then sank back in her seat with a fearful terror upon her, closing her eyes for one brief second, not daring to watch the results of her act,--if there were to be any results. The men in the front seat suddenly straightened up and looked around. "What's the matter?" growled the man who had got in last in quite a different tone from any he had used before. "What you tryin' to put over on us?" Shirley gasped and caught at her self-control. "I've dropped my book," she stammered out wildly, "Could you stop long enough to pick it up? It was borrowed!" she ended sweetly as if by inspiration, and wondering at the steadiness of her tone when blood was pounding so in her throat and ears, and everything was black before her. Perhaps--oh, perhaps they would stop and she could cry out to the people for help. The man rose up in his seat and looked back. Shirley cast one frightened glance back, too, and saw in that brief second that the other car had stopped and someone was standing up and looking back. "Hell! No!" said her captor briefly, ducking down in his seat. "_Let her out!_" he howled to the driver, and the car broke into a galloping streak, the wheels hardly seeming to touch the ground, the tonneau bounding and swaying this way and that. Shirley had all she could do to keep in her seat. At one moment she thought how easy it would be to spring from the car and lie in a little still heap at the roadside. But there were the notes! She must not abandon her trust even for so fearful an escape from her captors. Suddenly, without warning, they turned a sharp curve and struck into a rough, almost unbroken road into the woods, and the thick growth seemed to close in behind them and shut them out from the world. Shirley shut her eyes and prayed. CHAPTER XXIII