nd he drew the lash once or
twice across the pony's back and so was silent. Clementina looked at his
set and cheerless face, cheerless as that chill morning, and she too was
silent. She looked back along the road which she had traversed through
snow and sunshine and clear nights of stars; she saw it winding out from
the gates of Innspruck over the mountains, above the foaming river, and
after a while she said very wistfully,--

"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."

"Are there any better?" answered Wogan.

So this was what Mr. Wogan's fine project had come to. He remembered
another morning when the light had welled over the hills, sunless and
clear and cold, on the road to Bologna,--the morning of the day when he
had first conceived the rescue of Clementina. And the rescue had been
effected, and here was Clementina safe out of Austria, and Wogan sure of
a deathless renown, of the accomplishment of an endeavour held absurd
and preposterous; and these two short sentences were their summary and
comment,--

"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."

"Are there any better?"

Both had at this supreme crisis of their fortunes but the one
thought,--that the only days through which they had really lived were
those last two days of flight, of hurry, of hope alternating with
despair, of light-hearted companionship, days never to be forgotten,
when each snatched meal was a picnic seasoned with laughter, days of
unharnessed freedom lived in the open air.

Clementina was the first to perceive that her behaviour fell below the
occasion. She was safe in Italy, journeying henceforward safely to her
betrothed. She spurred herself to understand it, she forced her lips to
sing aloud the Te Deum. Wogan looked at her in surprise as the first
notes were sung, and the woful appeal in her eyes compelled him to as
brave a show as he could make of joining in the hymn. But the words
faltered, the tune wavered, joyless and hollow in that empty morning.

"Drive on," said Clementina, suddenly; and she had a sense that she was
being driven into bondage,--she who had just been freed. Wogan drove on
towards Peri.

It was the morning of Sunday, the 30th of April; and as the little cart
drew near to this hamlet of thirty cottages, the travellers could hear
the single bell in the church belfry calling the villagers to Mass.
Wogan spoke but once to Clementina, and then only to point out a wooden
hut which stood picturesquely on a wooded bluff of