Page:Restless Earth.djvu/108

“You must allow me to pay, sir,” he begged. Harley ignored him.

“How much?”

The driver seemed to be figuring out the mileage, when the elderly man tapped him upon the shoulder.

“Really, I insist, sir. It is very kind of you———.”

Harley interrupted him.

“Please. I have already arranged to pay for the car, and it is a privilege to give you and—and your people a lift, sir.”

“That is very kind of you, sir,” persisted the elderly man, “but, if you will not allow me to pay all, at least a share———”

“Hang on!” cried Roy, on a note of excitement.

“We’re coming to it!”

The car immediately ahead slowed suddenly, and a collision was avoided only by a swift application of the brakes, which threw all the passengers from their seats.

The interruption effectually checked the friendly dispute, which was not opened again.

Following the now creeping car ahead, Roy negotiated a wide crack in the road with extreme caution.

“If that’s a sample,” he remarked softly, when the danger was past, “what’s the rest of it like?”

None answered him.

Harley was barely interested. The elderly man had braced himself in his seat and was pretending to be unafraid. His wife clung to the window frame and prayed silently that the car be not swallowed in the yard-wide crack which, in her imagination, had assumed the dimensions of a yawning chasm and the character of snapping jaws. The daughter prayed for just such a calamity.

But at the top of the hill Harley saw that which claimed his interest and tore his heart afresh.

The sky to the north was red!

Swelling and waning in mighty billows above the outline of far black hills and the clustered lights