Then it slowed up still more, and finally stopped. Then it began to back down hill.
"I've stripped those blamed gears!" exclaimed Andy. ruefully.
"Can't you beat him?" asked Pete.
"I could have, easily, if my gears hadn't broken," declared the bully, but, as a matter of fact, he could not have done so. "I oughtn't to have changed, going up hill," he added, as he jammed on the brakes, to stop the car from sliding down the slope.
Tom saw and heard.
"I thought you were so anxious to race," he said, exultantly, as well he might. "I don't want to try a contest down hill, though, Andy," and he laughed at the red-haired lad, who was furious.
"Aw, go on!" was all the retort the squint-eyed one could think of to make.
"I am going on," replied our hero. "Just to show you that I can go down hill, watch me."
He turned his motor-cycle, and approached Andy's stalled car, for Tom was some distance in advance of it, up the slope by this time. As he approached the auto, containing the three disconcerted cronies, something bounded out of Tom's pocket. It was the bottle of stove blacking he had purchased for Mrs. Baggert. The
