Tom was still walking swiftly when he arrived in sight of Mary
Nestor's home. He was so filled with excitement both because of
the hold-up and the new scheme that Mr. Richard Bartholomew had
brought to him from the West, that he could keep neither to
himself. He just had to tell Mary!

Mary Nestor was a very pretty girl, and Tom thought she was
just about right in every particular. Although he had been about
a good deal for a young fellow and had seen girls everywhere,
none of them came up to Mary. None of them held Tom's interest
for a minute but this girl whom he had been around with for years
and whom he had always confided in.

As for the girl herself, she considered Tom Swift the very
nicest young man she had ever seen. He was her beau-ideal of
what a young man should be. And she entered enthusiastically into
the plans for everything that Tom Swift was interested in.

Mary was excited by the story Tom told her in the Nestor
sitting room. The idea of the electric locomotive she saw, of
course, was something that might add to Tom's laurels as an
inventor. But the other phase of the evening's adventure--"Tom,
dear!" she murmured with no little disturbance of mind. "That man
who stopped you! He is a thief, and a dangerous man! I hate to
think of your going home alone."

"He's got what he was after," chuckled Tom. "Is it likely he
will bother me again?"