n. They listened anxiously for the train to move, but there was no
sound of bell or exhaust. The distant shouts seemed more ominous.
Renwick only glanced behind them and hurried the pace. He led her around
a corner, into a well-lighted street where an automobile, its engine
running, was standing before a rather pretentious house. He ran up to it
and examined it quickly.

"It's really too bad," he muttered, with a quick glance toward the
house, "but our need is great," and got in, Marishka following without a
word. "It's a Mercedes, thank God," he whispered. "I hope it will go."

It did, with a sputter and roar which brought a shouting figure to the
door of the house, but Renwick was beyond stopping and turned blindly at
the next turning and followed the street through the sleeping town into
a well-traveled country road, which led straight onward toward the
setting moon.

"I haven't the slightest notion where we're going," he said presently,
"but we seem to be on our way."

Marishka found herself laughing nervously. She wasn't in the least
amused, but the strain was telling on her.

"Nice chap--the owner of this car, to put it just there. I'll have to
buy it, I suppose. No end of a good machine. I wonder if he thought to
fill the tank."

Renwick ran the car up a long hill which it took with ease, and at the
summit the moonlit summer landscape was visible for miles in all
directions. There at a crossroad the Englishman stopped the stolen car
in the shadow of a tree, got quickly out and investigated the tank.

"Plenty of petrol--enough for all night, I should say," he reported.
"And now"--as he looked around him in all directions--"which way? Hanged
if I know."

Marishka was scanning the valley below them eagerly. In the distance to
their right a row of lights moved slowly into the night. "The train!"
she said, "Budweis lies in that direction. I've often been over the road
from Konopisht. If we can reach it----"

"That ought not to be difficult. Here goes." And he took the crossroad
to the right.

So far all was well, but the stolen motor car was a dead weight on
Renwick's conscience, and the danger of detection was still most
unpleasant. If an excuse were needed for his arrest, a pretext which
would hide the real secret of the mission of his pursuers, the larceny
of the machine would now furnish it. He had no humor to see the inside
of a village jail from which communication with the Ambassador would be
diffi