After a lonely mountain village, named St. Germain-en-Calberte, and famous only because the tyrant-priest Chayla was burned there, the surface of the road changed with startling abruptness.  Till this moment we’d known no really bad roads anywhere, and almost all had been as white as snow, as pink as rose leaves, and smooth as velvet; but suddenly the Aigle sank up to her expensive ankles in deep, thick mud.

“Hullo, what’s this bumping?  Anything wrong with the car?”

Out popped Sir Samuel’s anxious head from its luxurious cage.

“The trouble is with the road,” answered the chauffeur, without so much as an “I told you so!” expression on his face.  “I’m afraid we’ve come to that declassee part.”

Poor Sir Samuel looked so humble and sad that I was sorry for him.  “My mistake!” he murmured meekly.  “Had we better turn after all?”

“I fear we can’t turn, or even run back, sir,” said Mr. Dane.  “The road’s so bad and so narrow, it would be rather risky.”

This was a mild way of putting it; and he was considerate in not mentioning the precipice which fell abruptly down under the uneven shelf he generously called a road.

Sir Samuel gave a wary glance down, and said no more.  Luckily Lady Turnour, sitting inside her cage, on the side of the rock wall we were following up the mountains, could not see that unpleasant drop under the shelf, or even quite realize that she was on a shelf at all.  Her husband sat down by her side, more quietly than he had got up, even forgetting to shut the window; but he was soon reminded of that duty.

“Are you frightened?” the chauffeur asked me; and I thought it no harm to answer:  “Not when you’re driving.”

“Do you mean that?  Or is it only an empty little compliment?” he catechized me, though his eyes did not leave the narrow slippery road, up which he was steering with a skill of a woman who aims for the eye of a delicate needle with the end of a thread a size too big.

“I mean it!” I said.

“I’m glad,” he answered.  “I was going to tell you not to be nervous, for we shall win through all right with this powerful car.  But now I will save my breath.”

“You may,” I said, “I’m very happy.”  And so I was, though I had the most curious sensation in my toes, as if they were being done up in curl papers.

On we climbed, creeping along the high shelf which was so untidily loaded with rough, fallen stones and layers of mud, powdered with bits of ice from the rocky wall that seemed sheathed in glass.  Icicles dangled heavy diamond fringes low over the roof of the car; snow lay in dark hollows which the sun could never reach even in summer noons; and as we ploughed obstinately on, always mounting, the engine trembling, our fat tyres splashed into a custardy slush of whitish brown.  The shelf had been slippery before; now, slopping over with this thick mush of melting snow or mud, it was like driving through gallons of ice