“I think you’re mistaken, sir,” replied the chauffeur, stopping while the car panted reproachfully.  “I know the ‘Routes de France’ says left, but they told me at Alais a new road had now been finished, and the old one condemned.”

“Well, I’d take anything I heard there with a grain of salt,” said Sir Samuel.  “How should they know?  Motor-cars are strange animals to them.  If there were a new road the ‘Routes’ would give it, and I vote for the left.”

“Whose car is it, anyway?” Lady Turnour was heard to murmur, not having forgiven my Fellow Worm two burst tyres and a broken chain.

Since chauffeurs should be seen and not heard, Mr. Jack Dane looked volumes and said not a word.  Backing the big Aigle, who was sulking in her bonnet, he put her nose to the left.  Now we were making straight, almost as the crow flies, for the Cevennes; but luckily for Lady Turnour’s peace of mind the snowy tops were hidden from sight behind other mountains’ shoulders as we approached.  A warning chill was in the air, like the breath of a ghost; but it could not find its way through the glass; and a few cartloads of oranges which we passed opportunely looked warm and attractive, giving a delusive suggestion of the south to our road.

It was gipsy-land, too, for we met several tramping families:  boldly handsome women, tall, dark men and boys with eagle eyes, and big silver buttons so well cared for they must have been precious heirlooms.  “‘Steal all you can, and keep your buttons bright,’ is a gipsy father’s advice to his son,” said Jack Dane, as we wormed up the road toward a pass where the brown mountains seemed to open a narrow, mysterious doorway.  So, fold upon fold shut us in, as if we had entered a vast maze from which we might never find our way out; and soon there was no trace of man’s work anywhere, except the zigzag lines of road which, as we glanced up or down, looked like thin, pale brown string tied as a child ties a “cat’s-cradle.”  We were in the ancient fastnesses of the Camisards; and this world of dark rock under clouding sky was so stern, so wildly impressive, that it seemed a country hewn especially for religious martyrs, a last stand for such men as fought and died praying, calling themselves “enfants de Dieu.”  Bending out from the front seat of the motor, my gaze plunged far down into the beds of foaming rivers, or soared far up to the dazzling white world of snow and steely sky toward which we steadily forged on.  Oh, there was no hope of hiding the snow now from those whom it might concern!  But Lady Turnour still believed, perhaps, that we should avoid it.

The higher the Aigle rose, climbing the wonderful road of snakelike twistings and turnings above sheer precipices, the more thrilling was the effect of the savage landscape upon our souls—­those of us who consciously possess souls.

We had met nobody for a long time now; for, since leaving the region of pines, we seemed to have passed beyond the road-mender zone, and the zone of waggons loaded with dry branches like piled elks’ horns.  Still, as one could never be sure what might not be lurking behind some rocky shoulder, where the road turned like a tight belt, our musical siren sang at each turn its gay little mocking notes.