as to leave a large ring round the
automobile which before had not had room to breathe.

"Misfire, that's all," said Mr. Barrymore, laughing and showing his nice
white teeth in a comforting way he has when anything alarming has
happened. Next instant the motor was docile as a lamb; the engine began
to purr; the Chauffeulier jumped to his seat, and, followed by a vast
sigh from the crowd, we darted away at thirty miles an hour.

The rest of the day was a changing dream of strange impressions, which
made Aunt Kathryn feel as if Denver were at least a million miles away.
We climbed once more up to the heights of the Velebit, seeing from among
the dark, giant pines which draped it in mourning, the great forests of
Croatia, Lika, and Krabava, with their conical mountains, and far off
the chains of Bosnia. Then, at a bound, we leaped into sight of the
Adriatic again and sped down innumerable _lacets_ overlooking the
beautiful land-locked sea of Novigrad, to tumble at last upon the little
town of Obrovazzo. Thence we flew on, over an undulating road, towards
Dalmatia's capital, Zara.

Just as anachronistic electric lights had shown us the way through
curiously Italian streets, with beautifully ornamented windows, past a
noble Corinthian column and out onto a broad space by the sea, without a
warning sigh the automobile stopped.

"Our last drop of petrol!" exclaimed Mr. Barrymore. "Lucky it didn't
give out before, as I began to be afraid it might, owing to the hills."

"By Jove! this doesn't look the sort of town to buy food and drink for
motors!" remarked Sir Ralph ruefully.

The Chauffeulier laughed. "Ours won't starve," said he. "I thought you
knew I'd ordered tins of petrol to meet us at every big town, for fear
of trouble. It will come down by boat, and I shall find the Zara lot
waiting for me at the Austrian Lloyd's storehouse. You'd have remembered
that arrangement if your wits hadn't been wool-gathering a bit lately."

"I wonder if they have?" soliloquized Sir Ralph. "Well, here we are
within three yards of a hotel which, if I've any brains left, is the
very one you selected from Baedeker."

We all got out as if we had stopped on purpose, and the hotel which Fate
and our Chauffeulier had chosen proved very fair, though too modern to
be in the picture.

If the automobile had flashed us to Mars things could hardly have been
more unfamiliar to our eyes than when we walked out next morning to find
ourselves in the