mbed the whole mountain over our heads, that Mamma and I put up
umbrellas to save ourselves from being drenched.

"What a place this would be for an accident! Or--suppose we met
something that _objected_ to us!" Mamma shrieked, her voice all but
drowned by the reverberation made by our motor in the hollow vault.

With that, as if her words had "conjured it from the vasty deep"--to use
a quotation of Sir Ralph's--something appeared, and it did object to us
very much.

It was a horse, and it gleamed like silver as our front lamp pointed it
out to our startled eyes with a long, bright finger of light.

He was coming towards us, down the narrow, arched passage, walking on
his hind legs, with some one in a cart behind him, standing up and
hitting him on the head with a whip.

We were not really going very fast on account of the splashy mud; but
what with the roaring echo of the motor, the dripping of water, the
narrowness of the tunnel, the yapping of our little dog, the shouts of
the man in the cart, and the strangeness of the picture ahead--just like
a lighted disc on the screen of a magic lantern--it did seem as if
everybody concerned must come to awful grief in about three seconds.

I don't know whether I screamed or not; though I know Mamma did; a deaf
man would have known that. But the first thing I was really sure of was
that Mr. Barrymore had not only stopped the car but the motor, had
jumped down, and gone to the horse's head.

He said something quickly to the driver, which I couldn't understand,
because it was in Italian; but the man didn't yell or whip the horse any
more. Mr. Barrymore patted the poor beast, and talked to him, until he
seemed tired of dancing about as if he were popcorn over a hot fire.
Then, when he had quieted down, and remembered that his forefeet were
given him to walk with and not to paw the air, Mr. Barrymore led him
gently up to our automobile, patting his neck all the time. He snorted
and quivered for a minute, then smelt of what Mr. Barrymore calls the
"bonnet," with the funniest expression of disgust and curiosity.

I imagined the horse was thinking, "This is a very nasty thing, but it
seems to belong to the nicest, kindest man I ever met, so perhaps it
isn't as bad after all as I thought at first."

The driver's scowl turned to a smile, as he eventually drove by, we
waiting till he had got safely past.

"I think that was real nice of you, Mr. Barrymore," said Mamma, as we
wen