after what I had been through I
wasn't quite sane. My coolness in the Pink Chalet had given place to a
crazy restlessness. I can see Peter yet, standing in the ring of
lamplight, supporting himself by a chair back, wrinkling his brows and,
as he always did in moments of excitement, scratching gently the tip of
his left ear. His face was happy.

'Never fear, Dick,' he said. 'It will all come right. _Ons sal 'n plan
maak._'

And then, still possessed with a demon of disquiet, I was on the road
again, heading for the pass that led to Italy.

The mist had gone from the sky, and the stars were shining brightly.
The moon, now at the end of its first quarter, was setting in a gap of
the mountains, as I climbed the low col from the St Anton valley to the
greater Staubthal. There was frost and the hard snow crackled under my
wheels, but there was also that feel in the air which preludes storm. I
wondered if I should run into snow in the high hills. The whole land
was deep in peace. There was not a light in the hamlets I passed
through, not a soul on the highway.

In the Staubthal I joined the main road and swung to the left up the
narrowing bed of the valley. The road was in noble condition, and the
car was running finely, as I mounted through forests of snowy Pines to
a land where the mountains crept close together, and the highway coiled
round the angles of great crags or skirted perilously some profound
gorge, with only a line of wooden posts to defend it from the void. In
places the snow stood in walls on either side, where the road was kept
open by man's labour. In other parts it lay thin, and in the dim light
one might have fancied that one was running through open meadowlands.

Slowly my head was getting clearer, and I was able to look round my
problem. I banished from my mind the situation I had left behind me.
Blenkiron must cope with that as best he could. It lay with him to deal
with the Wild Birds, my job was with Ivery alone. Sometime in the early
morning he would reach Santa Chiara, and there he would find Mary.
Beyond that my imagination could forecast nothing. She would be
alone--I could trust his cleverness for that; he would try to force her
to come with him, or he might persuade her with some lying story. Well,
please God, I should come in for the tail end of the interview, and at
the thought I cursed the steep gradients I was climbing, and longed for
some magic to lift the Daimler beyond the summit and s