ready now?"

"Yes."

"So am I."

And in a few moments she sat opposite him in the coach, on their way
home.

"It wouldn't be possible for me to sit on the box and drive?" she asked.

"I should like it, in this wild starlight, these flying clouds, this
breath of dawn."

Meeting no response, she sank into silence. No emotion can keep one
awake forever, and, after all her late fatigue, the roll of the easy
vehicle upon the springs soon soothed her into a dreamy state. Through
the efforts at wakefulness, she watched the gleams that fell within from
the carriage-lamps, the strange shadows on the roadside, the boughs
tossing to the wind and flickering all their leaves in the speeding
light; she watched, also, Mr. Raleigh's face, on which, in the fitful
flashes, she detected a look of utter weariness.

"_Monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_il faut que je vous gene!_"

"Immensely," said Mr. Raleigh with a smile; "but, fortunately, for no
great time."

"We shall be soon at home? Then I must have slept."

"Very like. What did you dream?"

"Oh, one must not tell dreams before breakfast, or they come to pass,
you know."

"No,--I am uninitiated in dream-craft. Mr. Heath"----

"_Monsieur_," she cried, with sudden heat, "_il me semble que je
comprends les Laocoons! J'en suis de meme!_"

As she spoke, she fell, struck forward by a sudden shock, the coach was
rocking like a boat, and plunging down unknown gulfs. Mr. Raleigh seized
her, broke through the door, and sprang out.

"_Qu'avez vous?_" she exclaimed.

"The old willow is fallen in the wind," he replied.

"_Quel dommage_ that we did not see it fall!"

"It has killed one of the horses, I fear," he continued, measuring, as
formerly, her terror by her levity. "Capua! is all right? Are you safe?"

"Yah, massa!" responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered
with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake-edge below. "Yah,
massa,--nuffin harm Ol' Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses;
had nuff chance to be in glory, ef 'twasn't. I's done beat wid dis yer
pony, anyhow, Mass'r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a 'sect to fly in de face
of all creation an' pay no 'tention to his centre o' gravity, he might
walk up dis yer hill!"

Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua's perplexity.
Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of
shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures,
and the great cr