een two heather-clad moors, which in South
Africa would have been called a nek, and dived down along a white road
leading into a broad forest track, sunlit now, but bordered on either
side by the twilight of towering pines and firs through which the
sunlight filtered only in little flakes, which lay upon the last year's
leaves and cones, somewhat as an electric light might have fallen on a
monkish manuscript of the thirteenth century.

Then came two more miles on hard, well-kept roads, so perfectly graded
that the upward slope was hardly perceptible.

"We're on our own ground now and I guess I'll let her out," said Miss
Auriole. "Don't be frightened, Norah. These things look big and strong,
but it's quite wonderful what they'll do when there's a bit of human
sense running them. See that your goggles are right and twist your veil
in a bit tighter, I'm going to give you a new sensation."

She waved her hand to her father in the car behind and put on the fourth
speed lever, and said: "Hold tight now."

Norah nodded, for she could hardly breathe as it was. Then the pines and
firs on either side of the broad drive melted into a green-grey blur.
The road under them was like a rapidly unwinding ribbon. The hilltops
which showed above the trees rose up now to the right hand and now to
the left, as the car swung round the curves. Every now and then Norah
looked at the girl beside her, controlling the distance-devouring
monster with one hand on a little wheel, her left foot on a pedal and
her right hand ready to work the levers if necessary.

The two miles of the drive from the gates to the front door of Whernside
House, a long, low-lying two-storeyed, granite-built house, which was
about as good a combination of outward solidity and indoor comfort as
you could find in the British Islands, was covered in two and a half
minutes, and the car pulled up, as Norah thought, almost at full speed
and stopped dead in front of the steps leading up from the broad road to
the steps leading up to the terrace which ran along the whole southward
front of Whernside House.

"I reckon, Miss Castellan--"

"If you say Miss Castellan, I shall get back to Settle by the first
conveyance that I can hire."

"Now, that's just nice of you, Norah. What I was going to say, if I
hadn't made that mistake, was, that this would be about the first time
that you had covered two miles along a road at fifty miles an hour, and
that's what you've just done. P