In a year or two all will be changed; the people owning summer homes will themselves own and use automobiles; the horses will see so many that little notice will be taken, but the pioneers of the sport will have an unenviable time.

A good half-day’s work was required on the machine before starting again.

The tire that had been plugged with rubber bands weeks before in Indiana was now leaking, the air creeping through the fabric and oozing out at several places.  The leak was not bad, just about enough to require pumping every day.

The extra tire that had been following along was taken out of the express office and put on.  It was a tire that had been punctured and repaired at the factory.  It looked all right, but as it turned out the repair was poorly made, and it would have been better to leave on the old tire, inflating it each day.

A small needle-valve was worn so that it leaked; that was replaced.  A stiffer spring was inserted in the intake-valve so it would not open quite so easily.  A number of minor things were done, and every nut and bolt tried and tightened.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN LEXINGTON AND CONCORD “THE WAYSIDE INN”

Saturday morning, September 7, at eleven o’clock, we left the Touraine for Auburndale, where we lunched, then to Waltham, and from there due north by what is known as Waltham Street to Lexington, striking Massachusetts Avenue just opposite the town hall.

Along this historic highway rode Paul Revere; at his heels followed the regulars of King George.  Tablets, stones, and monuments mark every known point of interest from East Lexington to Concord.

In Boston, at the head of Hull Street, Christ Church, the oldest church in the city, still stands, and bears a tablet claiming for its steeple the credit of the signals for Paul Revere; but the Old North Church in North Square, near which Revere lived and where he attended service, and from the belfry of which the lanterns were really hung, disappeared in the conflict it initiated.  In the winter of the siege of Boston the old meeting-house was pulled down by the British soldiers and used for firewood.  Fit ending of the ancient edifice which had stood for almost exactly one hundred years, and in which the three Mathers, Increase, Cotton, and Samuel,—­father, son, and grandson,—­had preached the unctuous doctrine of hell-fire and damnation; teaching so incendiary was bound sooner or later to consume its own habitation.

Revere was not the only messenger of warning.  For days the patriots had been anxious concerning the stores of arms and ammunition at Concord, and three days before the night of the 18th Revere himself had warned Hancock and Adams at the Clarke home in Lexington that plans were on foot in the enemies’ camp to destroy the stores, whereupon a portion was removed to Sudbury and Groton.  Before Revere started on his ride, other messengers had been despatched