of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he
aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two
cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be
lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and
boulders, and made good the breach.

"Excellent!" ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. "But I am
wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in
and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the
farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and
lay on the whip!"

This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had
to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover
and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the
horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was.
On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver
had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing,
held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the _calash_, and
only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on
Claudius' shoulders. At this contact--at the sight of those roseate,
dimpled hands--he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured
himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of
the solar chariot.

Such a pace overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden
collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the
farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily,
the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually.
On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches of which a
musically rippling brook was running; on the other, the ruins of a barn,
which a flood had demolished.

On the knoll beyond, the haven stood, and Kaiserina smiled as she leaned
her head forward so that her cheek was next his.

Again she had saved him!

No; not yet!

From both sides of the road at the hollow, three horsemen came solemnly
forth, two from the right, one from the ruins.

The girl turned pale and shrank back. Claudius flung down the broken
whip, and, taking the reins in his teeth, held a pistol in each hand. He
had recognized in the most prominent rider Major von Sendlingen, and in
an instant he comprehended that this was a trap and that his chivalric,
Christian conduct w