“You go ahead, and I’ll show her the way,” suggested my tempter. That he had traveled the same road many, many times became evident to us. In fact, he confided that he had been arrested in every state in the Union, and his face was so well known in the Houston court that the judge had wearied of fining him, and now merely let him off with a rebuke. So hoping our faces would have the same effect on the judge, we trustingly following his directions into town, our khaki-clad friends leading. “Turn off to the right here,” said my guide. I turned, and in a flash, the motor-cycles wheeled back to us. Smiling as ever, our captors shook their heads warningly. “Now, lady, none of that! You follow right after us.” Profusely my guide protested he had merely meditated a short cut to the station house. Elaborately he explained the route he had intended to take. Poor chap, D’Artagnan himself could not have schemed more nimbly to rescue a lady from the Bastille. I saw how his madcap mind had visioned the quiet turn down the side street, the doubling on our tracks, the lightning change of himself into the driver’s seat, a gray Cadillac streaking ninety miles an hour past the scattering populace of Houston, then breathless miles on into the safety of the plains--the ladies rescued, himself a hero---- Instead, we tamely drew up before a little brick station-house two blocks beyond. He did all he could, even offering to appear in court the next day and plead for us, but from what we now knew of his local record, it seemed wiser to meet the judge on our own merits. Our arrival caused a sensation. The police circles of Houston evidently did not every day see a Massachusetts car piled high with baggage driven by two women, flanked by a soldier on each running board. When we entered the sheriff’s office, every man in the room turned his back for a moment and shook with mirth. They led me to a wicket window with Toby staunchly behind. The sheriff, in shirt sleeves and suspenders, amiably pushed a bag of Bull Durham toward me. I started back at this unusual method of exchanging formalities. A policeman, also in shirt sleeves and suspenders, a twinkle concealed in his sweet Southern drawl, explained, “The lady thawt yo’ meant them fixin’s for her, Charley, instead of fo’ that mean speed-catcher.” The sheriff took my name and address. “Massachusetts?” he exclaimed. Then, all of a sudden, he shot back at me. “Yo’re a lawng ways from _home_!” “I wish I were longer,” I said. “Never mind, lady,” he said, soothingly and caressingly. “Yo’ give me twenty dollars now, and tell the jedge your story tomorrow, an’ seein’ as how you’re a stranger and a lady, he’ll give it all back to you.” On that understanding, I paid him twenty dollars.