e crest of the Here they stopped to view the panorama of the
Beyond.

From the height on which they halted, they looked out upon a wilderness
of which they had no previous conception, for the hill they had just
ascended had masked it from view.

Below them, at a distance of about two miles, as far as the eye could
see from left to right stretched a black and dense forest of unknown
antiquity. Behind and beyond it at increasing distances peak upon lofty
peak, mountain after mountain, like Babel, reached upward for the sky.
Of these the one nearest and directly in front of the knights errant
claimed attention.

"Looks like a giant coal scuttle, sir," said Carrick the trite. The
description was apt, for the freak of nature which confronted them.
Towering high above its neighbors this mountain was unusual. Some
outraged Titan in his ire had, in some long-forgotten aeon, apparently
seized and turned upon its head the top-heavy crest, whose form roughly
speaking was of a reversed truncated cone. Upon the wide plateau at the
top, with battlemented walls and towers outlined against a turquoise
sky, stood a high pitched castle whose topmost turrets seemed suspended
from the heavens above them.

"Can you myke out the flag, sir?" Carrick asked anxiously, seeing that
his master was viewing the donjon critically through the glasses.

Much depended on the nationality of the standard, which, hardly visible
at that distance, was only discernible as a blur upon the blue of the
otherwise immaculate sky. The castle undoubtedly commanded that highway
on the far side of the wood along which they must pass. Carter had
descended into the road and was eagerly adjusting the focus for a better
view.

"Can't make it out exactly. It's not Russian for one thing. Field's red.
Device is blue. Dragon or something. Have to take a chance till we get a
nearer look."

Carrick, meanwhile, was peering intently down the road ahead of him
where it disappeared into the midnight gloom of the forest. His alert
eyes had noted two or three objects emerge from among the trees and
stop.

"Look there, sir," and his outstretched arm indicated the direction
while Carter swung his glasses around to the place.

"Videttes," he exclaimed without looking up. "Sizing us up through
glasses, eh?"

"Russians?" The chauffeur's excitement was manifest, for he was frowning
in a vain endeavor to discern the distant specks.

"I don't know. We're in sort of a fix," was