ms flickered like
flames along the fences, for the other flowers wilted in the glare.
Caroline, hatless and happy as a lizard in the relentless heat, spun
along on her bicycle, the only bit of movement on all the long
stretch of the road. The householders had all retired behind their
green blinds; even New England yielded to August's imperious
_siesta_, and it might have been a deserted village, empty and
mysterious, through which she glided.

By little and little she grew to feel this; her feet moved more and
more slowly on the pedals, her brows knitted as the great idea grew.
Her lips moved, inaudibly at first, but soon began the sing-song
murmur so well known to those who crept upon her unawares.

"I am all alone; the rest have gone--where have they gone!--where
_could_ they go? Oh, they're dead. Murdered! No, the town was
besieged, and we made ropes with our hair, and bowstrings.... And
they all marched out, and they closed the city gates...." Slower and
slower the pedals moved: Caroline was pushing uphill. "So then the
Mayor said: 'No, this sacrifice is too great--I can not allow you to
make it, my brave children. Death--and worse--await you beyond these
walls. Let us die here together.'" Her chin quivered. At the summit
of the hill she paused.

"'Then _die_! Die like the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"--with
feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding
with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an
empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled
driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness
of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the
very outskirts of the village, and in a flash Caroline knew it for
what it was, and shuddered.

"It's the Tumbrel!" she murmured softly, and to her awed fancy the
graceful, slim-necked figures in flowered gowns drooped dreadfully
or stiffened in a last pathetic defiance as they rolled by.

"Courage, my sister, courage!" whispered the brave gentleman, while
the hoarse crowd shouted.... "_And I am Marie Antoinette!_" cried
Caroline in a burst of inspiration.

Dismounting, she walked proudly beside her wheel; scornfully she
held her head above that vulgar, cruel mob; the driver, poor in
illusions, drowsed stupidly in front of the baleful wagon-load he
knew not of, and clattered down the hill. To the ill-fated Queen,
who followed the curving line of the twelve-foot iron fe