e car as I do this
night, and if confidence and a good engine won't win across the
Arlberg, then we'll give it up, Lal, and take to perambulators."

"Not meaning any reference to the lady," said I; but his face clouded,
and I wished I hadn't spoken.

"She's in Paris, and thank God for it," he exclaimed, rising to go up
to bed; "if she were here in Brigenz to-night, I wouldn't give sixpence
for my chances, and that's the whole truth. Now, let's go to by-by; if
we don't, I'll be dreaming of her, and dreams won't win laurel-wreaths,
as even you will admit."

I let him go, and followed some ten minutes later to my own room. It
was just cussedness, I suppose, which kept me back, for, as I went
across the corridor of the first floor of our hotel I heard a woman
with a laugh which struck sparks off you; and turning round, there was
Maisa Hubbard herself in a fine Paris gown and a great straw hat, with
a pink feather in it large enough to decorate the Shah. She just gave
a pleasant nod to me and then went downstairs, while I made for my
bedroom, wondering what Ferdy would have said if he had seen her, and
what real bad luck brought her to Brigenz at such a time.

Of course, she had come on by train. Lots of people did, to follow the
racing; and here she was with a merry party, just as simple-looking and
as guileless as a shepherdess at the Vic, and looking no older than a
school-girl. When I got up at four next morning I was full of
curiosity to know if Ferdy had seen her. But he was out at his car in
the "control," cheerful enough as far as he himself was concerned, but
mighty anxious about his mechanician, Down, who had broken his arm
trying to start up the engine, and had already been taken to the
hospital. A minute later I heard that our old wheezer wouldn't start
at all, and there it was, as though a special Providence had ordered it.

"You can't move your own char-a-banc--the crank-shaft's broken,"
Ferdinand said to me, as he asked me for the tenth time to get up
beside him; "I've got no one, and I'm going to win this race. If you
could conjure up a new crankshaft out of nothing, you would still be
three behind the last in, and all the town out to laugh at you. Get
up, Lal, and have done with it. I tell you I knew it from the first."

Well, I stared at this: and having just a word with my mechanician
Billy, and being quite sure that the Vezey, however good she was at
going back on me, wouldn't go forward t