hroat of Liberty
every time they jab at England. What's the use? You can't talk to
them. They're lunatics. But when they start things over here they've
got to be put into straitjackets."

"They _are_ lunatics," repeated Westmore. "If they weren't, they
wouldn't risk the wholesale murder of women and children. That is a
purely German peculiarity; it's what the normal boche delights in. But
the Irish are white men. And it's only when they're crazy they'd try a
thing like this."

After a long silence:

"How fast, Garry?"

"Around fifty."

"How far is it?"

"About twenty-five miles further."

The car rushed on through the night under the brilliant July stars and
over a perfect road. In the hollows, where spring brooks ran under
stone bridges, a slight, chilling mist hung, but otherwise the night
was clear and warm.

Woods, fields, farms, streamed by in the darkness; the car tore on in
the wake of its glaring, golden headlights, where clouds of little
winged creatures of the night whirled and eddied like flecks of
tinsel.

Rarely they encountered other cars, for the hour was late, and there
were no lights in the farm houses which they passed along the road.

They spoke seldom now, their terrific speed and the roaring wind
discouraging conversation. But the night air, which they whipped into
a steadily flowing gale, was still soft and fragrant and warm; and
with every mile their exhilaration increased.

Now the eastern horizon, which had already paled to a leaden tone, was
becoming pallid; and few stars were visible except directly overhead.

Barres slowed down to twenty miles. Long double barriers of dense and
misty woodland flanked the road on either hand, with few cultivated
fields between and very rarely a ramshackle barn.

Acres of alder swamp spread away on either hand, set with swale and
pool and tussock. And across the flat desolation the east was all a
saffron glow now, and the fish-crows were flying in twos and threes
above the bog holes.

"There's a man in the road ahead," said Westmore.

"I see him."

The man threw up one arm in signal, then made a sweeping gesture
indicating that they should turn to the left. The man was Renoux.

"A cart-track and a pair of bars," said Westmore. "Their car has been
in there, too. You can see the tire marks."

Renoux sprang onto the running board without a word.

Barres steered his car very gingerly in through the bars and along the
edge of the woods whe