Page:Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car.djvu/182

172 he had a queer scar on the hand that grabbed me. And somewhere—I can't recall now, I'm in such a flutter—I've seen that man and his scar before."

"Try to think," urged Mr. Blackford. "We must get at the bottom of this outrage, and if you can give us a clue it will help a lot."

"I can't think now," protested Mollie, weakly.

"Maybe it will come to me later. Oh, what a night! If only our auto would work we could get to—some place."

"Suppose you let me have a look," suggested Mr. Blackford. "I know something of the mechanism of a car."

"Oh, if you can only get this one to—mote!" sighed Mollie.

Mr. Blackford proved that he did know considerable about a car, for he soon discovered that the trouble was a simple disarrangement of the ignition system.

"There!" he exclaimed, when, by the light of a held-up lantern, he had made the necessary adjustment. "We will see if it won't go. Of course you can't use the self-starter, since your storage battery is out of order, but we can crank up in the old-fashioned way."

"The car generates its own current when it is running," said Mollie. "But to-day I have been running on an extra battery, as something