rebuffed that for the rest of his days he will undoubtedly harbor in his heart a bitter regret that he ever responded to the Christian urge to render assistance to a fellow human being on the highway of life.
The South Penn Oil Company which owns a naphtha plant some two or three hundred feet from the Henry Mills Road in Warren County, maintained in the summer of 1949 a pipeline which extended from its plant to the road. For some distance before the line dipped beneath the road to reach the other side it travelled at a height of two feet above the ground. A shallow drainage ditch of some 10 inches depth bordered the road and the pipe at this point rose to a height of somethree feet. However, bushes and seasonal foliage concealed it from general view.
On the night of July 1, 1949, Frank Ewing was driving his truck on this Henry Mills Road. When he reached the immediate vicinity of the gas pipe described, the front wheels of his truck slipped into the drainage ditch and he apparently became wedged there. He got out of the truck and flagged for assistance from the first vehicle coming by. This vehicle happened to be an automobile driven by Bruce E. *444 Helm, the plaintiff in this case, who was on his way to a town named Barnes. Helm stopped and offered to take Ewing, whom he had never seen before, back to Sheffield from which he had just come, to obtain the services of