lay sleeping, a dream
clear-cut, melodious. Over all the moon hung full, turning the world
to silver. Never had music so fairy a setting.

"Then to Sylvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling,
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling
To her let us garlands bring."

Half-past eleven o'clock of a fine moonlit night, and I was alone with
the car all among the Carinthian Alps. It was for Fladstadt that I was
making. That was the Bairlings' nearest town. Their place, St.
Martin, lay twenty odd miles from Fladstadt. But in the town people
would show me the way. At St. Martin I should find Daphne and the
others, newly come from Vienna this afternoon. Friends of Jonah's, the
Bairlings. None of us others knew them.

At ten o'clock in the morning I had slid out of Trieste, reckoning to
reach Fladstadt in twelve hours. And, till I lost my way, I had come
well. I had lost it at half-past nine and only discovered that I had
lost it an hour later. It was too late to turn back then. I tried to
get on and across by by-roads--always a dangerous game. Just when I
was getting desperate I had chanced on a signpost pointing to the town
I sought. The next moment one of the tires had gone.

The puncture I did not mind, The car had detachable wheels, and one was
all ready, waiting to be used. But when I found that I had no
jack...Better men than I would have sworn. The imperturbable Jonah
would have stamped about the road. As for Berry, with no one there to
suffer his satire, suppressed enmity would have brought about a
collapse. He would probably have lost his memory.

There was nothing for it, but to drive slowly forward on the flat tire.
When I came to a village I could rouse an innkeeper, and if the place
did not boast a jack, at least sturdy peasants should raise the car
with a stout pole. Accordingly, I had gone on.

For the first five miles I had not lighted on so much as a barn. Then
suddenly I had swung round a bend of the road to see a great white
mansion right ahead of me. The house stood solitary by the roadside,
dark woods rising steep behind. No light came from its windows.
Turreted, white-walled, dark-roofed in the moonlight, it might have
been the outpost of some fairy town. The building stood upon the
left-hand side of the way, and, as I drew slowly alongside, wondering
if I dared knock upon its gates for assistance, I found that house and
road curled to the left