nce, then
in again for the trial, while Dick walked, ready to offer aid if it were
needed. I had rasped through to the top, and the Gloria had actually
started on the down grade, when she gave a grinding scream, and stuck
between the parapets.

I tried to move, and could not. The car was hopelessly jammed.

"Nice fix," said Dick. "If I was writing a book, I'd say, 'this route only
suitable for hundred horse-power cars, built in small sections, and
carrying cheerful passengers.' Now, we were cheerful once--and may be
again. Chuck me over the key of the tool-box, will you?"

I did so without a word, lest if I uttered any they should be too strong.
But curiosity overcame me when I heard a metallic chinking, then the blows
of a hammer.

"Only knocking down a bit of this old parapet," was the calm answer to my
question. "Some of it's gone already; why not more? I bet future
generations will thank me--as it's certain never to be mended."

As he spoke, there was a great splash, when a piece of the parapet,
already weakened by years of storm and stress, plumped over into the
river. The car was released, and slid down the other slope of the camel's
back.

Now it did seem that we might safely thank San Cristobal, since nothing
could well be worse than the pass from which he had just delivered us,
scratched, bruised, yet unbroken. We had but to scramble out of the rough
river-bed, bump over the level crossing of a railway, to come out upon a
broad, smooth highway like a road to paradise. Ready to shout with joy, I
put on speed, and the Gloria sprinted over the white and silent way as if
she were happy to turn her back upon Inferno.

Yesterday's study of the map assured me that at length we had struck the
main road from Malaga, and there seemed every reason to believe that the
ordeal just over would be our last. Flying along at a good fifty miles an
hour, under a tired moon that sought the west, presently a town rose
grandly up before us, throned on rocks in a wide valley, and pallid in the
strange light as some sad queen.

Loja, tragically lost key of Granada, sister of famed Alhama, stronghold
of that fierce alcayde who called Boabdil's sultana daughter! Loja, and
only thirty miles more to Granada.

We rushed towards that wide valley, and on to the mountain town which
dared to repulse Ferdinand. In the deserted streets the only sound was the
singing of many springs, the same musical voices, the same strains that
Lord R