l. It was pitch dark as they made their
way across the level top of the knob, with occasional shadows of
spectral limbs projecting their silhouettes against the sky, and once
the jagged edge of a trailing creeper swished close to her head as
they whirled along. Above the noise of the motor there was not a
sound. Claybrook suddenly laughed:

"Some of the niggers down at the mill say this old hill is haunted."

She clung to the hand-grip of her seat, her mind filled with a tangle
of impressions, with a shrinking from the sepulchral depths below
them, and an effort to recall in detail that vision of the city.

"I have to shake it off before I can be any more good. It's like being
moon-struck." He took another sharp curve at reckless speed, the tires
grinding on the gravel, the brakes screeching.

Mary Louise held her breath for a moment and waited. And then she
touched him lightly on the elbow. "Oh, please!"

He laughed and for a short time was more careful, slowing down at the
curves which came every hundred yards or so. "Feels like they're
coming after me. Like to get down to the level road again." He made a
quick swerve to avoid a pointed rock. "Must have been great, driving
to the top of this with a horse and buggy. Not for me."

And they were off again as swiftly as before. Twice they grazed the
projecting roots of trees on the outside edge of the road by the
scantiest of margins and once a board in a culvert snapped ominously
as they swept across it, and Claybrook laughed aloud. And Mary Louise,
wide-eyed, sat in a frenzy of preparedness, her gaze glued to the
winding, ever-dipping road in fascination.

Suddenly a shadow seemed to leap out upon them, out of the
darkness--the shadow of a man. There was a moment's hideous clamour of
the brakes, a sickening swerve of the machine, a man's shout, a sudden
instant's flash of gleaming trunks brought sharply into focus, and
then a slow, gradual letting down of her side of the car, inch by
inch. She grasped the arm beside her to keep from falling, and then
all was still.

A moment later she could see that they were balanced on the edge of a
culvert; to her right was the darkness; up ahead, the lights were
glaring impotently off into space. And then she realized that an arm
was encircling her waist in an iron grip and that the motor was still
thrumming and that someone was running around in front of the car and
then peering off down the slope where they tipped so peri