noon
This country to which the general agent had sent him was becoming more and more sparsely settled . The chances were stretching out against him with every mile . The farther into that country he should go the smaller would become the need for that marvelous labor-saving invention . Lambert had passed the last house before noon , when his sixty-five-pound bicycle had suffered a punctured tire , and there had bargained with a Scotch woman at the greasy kitchen door with the smell of curing sheepskins in it for his dinner . It took a good while to convince the woman that the All-in-One was worth it , but she yielded out of pity for his hungry state . From that house he estimated that he had made fifteen miles before the tire gave out ; since then he had added ten or twelve more to the score . Nothing that looked like a house was in sight , and it was coming on dusk .