The young man showed his surprise.

“Walk!” he exclaimed.  “What is it—­a bet?”

Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway.  It took some time to explain to the young man.  First, he had to be told about the Scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve some personal sacrifice.  And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice.  He had not earned the money, Jirnmie argued; he had only avoided paying it to the railroad.  If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude of Sadie by a falsehood.  Therefore, he must walk.

“Not at all,” protested the young man.  “You’ve got it wrong.  What good will it do your sister to have you sunstruck?  I think you are sunstruck.  You’re crazy with the heat.  You get in here, and we’ll talk it over as we go along.”

Hastily Jimmie backed away.  “I’d rather walk,” he said.

The young man shifted his legs irritably.

“Then how’ll this suit you?” he called.  “We’ll declare that first ’one good turn’ a failure and start afresh.  Do me a good turn.”

Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.

“I’m going to Hunter’s Island Inn,” called the young man, “and I’ve lost my way.  You get in here and guide me.  That’ll be doing me a good turn.”

On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter’s Island Inn.  Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.

“Much obliged,” he called.  “I got ter walk.”  Turning his back upon temptation, he waddled forward into the flickering heat waves.

* * * * *

The young man did not attempt to pursue.  At the side of the road, under the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes the retreating figure of Jimmie.  But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him.  It was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached but before his eyes put into practise, that interested him.  The young man with white hair had been running away from temptation.  At forty miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a fellow mortal “a good turn.”  That morning, to the appeal of a drowning Caesar to “Help me, Cassius, or I sink,” he had answered:  “Sink!” That answer he had no wish to reconsider.  That he might not reconsider he had sought to escape.  It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a jealous mistress.  For retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence.  But he had not escaped.  Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels, and set him again to thinking.  Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled