brake.

Terry stopped our car, and the ill-matched pair had to be united again,
with a shorter rope. "Afraid you'll have to walk, Prince," said he, when
he had finished helping Joseph, who was apparently on the brink of
tears.

Dalmar-Kalm measured me with a glance. "Perhaps Sir Ralph would not
object to steering my car?" he suggested. "Then Joseph could walk, and I
could have Sir Ralph's place in the tonneau with the ladies, where a
little extra weight would do no harm. Would that not be an excellent
arrangement?"

"David left Goliath on the ground, and dragged away only his head," I
remarked. "_We_ are dragging Goliath; and I fear his head would be the
last--er--feather. So sorry. Otherwise we should be delighted."

What the Prince said as the procession began to move slowly up-hill
again, at a pace to keep time with the "Dead March in Saul," I don't
pretend to know, but if his remarks matched his expression, I would not
in any case have recorded them here.

VI

A CHAPTER OF PREDICAMENTS

On we went, and twilight was falling in this deep gorge, so evidently
cut by the river for its own convenience, not for that of belated
tourists. Here and there in the valley little rock towns stood up
impressively, round and high on their eminences, like brown, stemless
mushrooms. Each little group of ancient dwellings resembled to my mind a
determined band of men standing back to back, shoulder to shoulder,
defending their hearths and homes from the Saracens, and saying grimly,
"Come on if you dare. We'll fight to the death, one and all of us."

At last, without further mishap, we arrived at a mean village marked
Airole on Terry's map. It was a poverty-stricken place, through which,
in happier circumstances, we should have passed without a glance,
but--there, by the roadside was a blacksmith's forge, more welcome to
our eyes than a castle double-starred by Baedeker.

Joseph's spleen reduced by the sight of his master tramping in the mud
while he steered, the little chauffeur looked almost cheerful. He
promised to have a new lever ready in half an hour, and so confident was
he that he urged us to go on. But the Prince did not echo the
suggestion, and Mrs. Kidder proposed that we should have tea while we
waited.

Though it was she who gave birth to the idea, it would have been Miss
Destrey who did all the work, had not Terry and I offered such help as
men can give. He went in search of water to fill the shining k