Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/112

 ing of the car caused his foot to fly off the brake pedal. When that happened, it continued on its way down the hill toward the wooden bridge that spanned the Swampsjcott River, swaying from one side of the road to the other. At times it threatened to climb trees or telephone poles, or crash through fences and plunge like a battering-ram into the fronts of houses or stores. But always the crazy machine swerved in time to avoid disaster, and shot across to the other side of the road.

When his right hand slipped from the wheel, the judge grabbed the side of the car body, and his clutching thumb jammed down the button that operated the electric siren. The button stuck, and the siren howled like a doomed demon of despair, causing Nathan Wiggin's hair to stand up stiff as the bristles on a horse brush.

The fearsome sound of the wailing whistle brought people running to windows to behold a sight no one in Greenbush had ever expected to see—Judge Wiggin driving an automobile! To say that he was driving it more than borders on hyperbole; it would be far closer to the truth to state that it was driving him—frantic! He was not habitually a profane man, but he possessed a broad vocabulary of vigorous expletives of a more or less impious nature; and it must be admitted that the language he addressed to that motor car would have shocked a parson. Those who dashed to their windows in time to see him shoot zigzagging past beheld a man that was little short of raving mad.

Hens that had been scratching peacefully in the village street fled, squawking. Barking furiously, a yellow dog charged out. The car leaped at the animal, struck it with one forward wheel, and sent it, spinning and howling, into the gutter.

Deaf as a doormat, old Betsy Tucker, going to market with a hand basket containing two dozen eggs, neither saw nor heard until the runaway auto was perilously close upon her and the judge was howling like a maniac for her to "clear the road." Then she gave a yell and threw up her arms, flinging basket and eggs into the air. She was saved by sheer luck, for the judge, plunging at the wheel, turned the machine so that it missed her by less than a foot. The basket came down, bottom up, on Nathan Wiggin's head, and the eggs—well, for some moments thereafter the judge could not have seen to drive, had he possessed the required skill. From his shoulders up he resembled the initial preparation of an omelet.

"Holy sassafras!" he spluttered. "It's raining fish glue! Everything happens at once!"

As soon as he could blink a pair of peepholes through that golden film—he did not dare let go with his hands to wipe his eyes—he saw that the foot of the hill was almost reached, and that the bridge across the peacefully flowing river lay just ahead. It was not a very wide bridge, and Tobias Blaisdell, perched on a load of hay drawn by two horses, was just driving on to the far end.

"Back up, you blinkety-blank jayhawker!" yelled the judge. "Make a clear passage or I'll bore a tunnel in ye!"

Had he been less excited he would have realized that it was much too late for such a cumbersome obstruction to get out of the way. Blaisdell had time only to check his horses and stare in horror at the shrieking engine of destruction that was charging upon him. He did not recognize Nathan Wiggin in the egg-bespattered wild man who seemed to be guiding the humming mechanism of disaster, but he knew that, in about four seconds, unless a miracle intervened, horses, motor car,