All at
once, Helen felt subdued. The fancy seized her that the carriage was
rumbling over the roof of the world. In a word, she was yielding to
the exhilaration of high altitudes, and her brain was ready to spin
wild fantasies.

At Sils-Maria she was brought suddenly to earth again. It must not
be forgotten that her driver was a St. Moritz man, and therefore
at constant feud with the men from the Kursaal, who brought empty
carriages to St. Moritz, and went back laden with the spoil that would
otherwise have fallen to the share of the local livery stables. Hence,
he made it a point of honor to pass every Maloja owned vehicle on the
road. Six times he succeeded, but, on the seventh, reversing the moral
of Bruce's spider, he smashed the near hind wheel by attempting to
slip between a landau and a stone post. Helen was almost thrown into
the lake, and, for the life of her, she could not repress a scream.
But the danger passed as rapidly as it had risen, and all that
happened was that the carriage settled down lamely by the side of
the road, with its weight resting on one of her boxes.

The driver spoke no more English. He bewailed his misfortune in free
and fluent Italian of the Romansch order.

But he understood German, and when Helen demanded imperatively that
he should unharness the horses, and help to prop the carriage off a
crumpled tin trunk that contained her best dresses, he recovered his
senses, worked willingly, and announced with a weary grin that if the
_gnaedische fraeulein_ would wait a little half-hour he would obtain
another wheel from a neighboring forge.

Having recovered from her fright she was so touched by the poor
fellow's distress that she promised readily to stand by him until
repairs were effected. It was a longer job than either of them
anticipated. The axle was slightly bent, and a blacksmith had to bring
clamps and a jackscrew before the new wheel could be adjusted. Even
then it had an air of uncertainty that rendered speed impossible. The
concluding five miles of the journey were taken at a snail's pace, and
Helen reflected ruefully that it was possible to "bruk ze leg" on the
level high road as well as on the rocks of Corvatsch.

Of course, she received offers of assistance in plenty. Every carriage
that passed while the blacksmith was at work pulled up and placed a
seat therein at her command. But she refused them all. It was not that
she feared to desert her baggage, for Switzerland is