es tracks in the water,
and our automobile hummed cheerfully to itself, forging steadily up. It
was so nice having nothing to drag that, by comparison with yesterday
afternoon, we moved like a ship under full sail; but suddenly the road
reared up on its hind feet and stood almost erect, as though it had been
frightened by the huge snow-capped mountains that all at once crowded
round us. An icy wind rushed down from the tops of the great white
towers, as if with the swooping wings of a giant bird, and it took our
car's breath away.

Instead of humming it began to pant, and I noticed the difference at
once. If I'd been Maida, I should probably have been too polite to put
questions about the thing's behaviour, for fear Mr. Barrymore might
think I hadn't proper confidence in him; but being Beechy, with no
convictions to live up to, I promptly asked if anything was the matter.

"The car's only trying to tell me that she can't manage to spurt up on
third speed any more," said he. "I shall put on the second, and you'll
hear what a relief it gives to the motor."

It certainly was as if the automobile had gulped down a stimulant, and
revived in a second. But as we turned a shoulder of the mountain, coming
in sight of a railroad depot, a high embankment, and a monstrous wall of
mountain with the sky for a ceiling, I couldn't help giving a little
squeak.

"Is that a _road_?" I asked, pointing up to a network like a skein of
silk twisted in a hundred zigzags across the face of the mountain from
bottom to top. "Why, it's like the way up Jack's beanstalk. No sane
automobile could do it."

"Some could," said Mr. Barrymore, "but I dare say it's lucky for us that
ours hasn't got to. It's the old road, only used now to communicate with
that desolate fortress you see on the top shelf of the mountain,
standing up there on the sky-line like the ark on Ararat. All this
country is tremendously fortified by both the French and Italians, in
case they should ever come to loggerheads. Above us somewhere is a long
tunnel burrowing into the _col_, and the new road runs through that
instead of over the summit."

"Bump!" went the car, as he finished his explanation, and then we began
to wade jerkily through a thick layer of loose stones that had been
spread over the road like hard butter over stale bread.

"_Le corse_" (that is what our landlord had called the cruel wind
sweeping down from the snow mountains) was hurling itself into our
face