The postillion drove so close to the cart that he touched it as he passed.  “We are lost!” he shouted in an agony; and O’Toole saw the hind wheel of the berlin slip off the road and revolve for the fraction of a second in the air.  He was already putting his horse at the precipice as though it was a ditch to be jumped, when the berlin made, to his astonished eyes, an effort to recover its balance like a live thing.  It seemed to spring sideways from the brink of the precipice.  It not only seemed, it did spring; and O’Toole, drawing rein, in the great revulsion of his feelings, saw, as he rocked unsteadily in his saddle, the carriage tearing safe and unhurt down the very centre of the road.

O’Toole set his spurs to his horse and galloped after it.  The postillion looked back and laughed.

“Trinkgeldt!” he cried.

O’Toole swore loudly, and getting level beat him with his whip.  Wogan’s head popped out of the window.

“Silence!” said he in a rage.  “Mademoiselle is asleep;” and then seeing O’Toole’s white and disordered face he asked, “What is it?” No one in the coach had had a suspicion of their danger.  But O’Toole still saw before his eyes that wheel slip over the precipice and revolve in air, he still felt his horse beneath him quiver and refuse this leap into air.  In broken tones he gasped out his story to Wogan, and as he spoke the Princess stirred.

“Hush!” said Wogan; “she need not know.  Ride behind, O’Toole!  Your blue eyes are green with terror.  Your face will tell the story, if once she sees it.”

O’Toole fell back again behind the carriage, and at four that afternoon they stopped before the post-house at Brixen.  They had crossed the Brenner in a storm of snow and howling winds; they had travelled ten leagues from Innspruck.  Wogan called a halt of half an hour.  The Princess had eaten barely a mouthful since her supper of the night before.  Wogan forced her to alight, forced her to eat a couple of eggs, and to drink a glass of wine.  Before the half-hour had passed, she was anxious to start again.

From Brixen the road was easier; and either from the smoothness of the travelling or through some partial relief from his anxieties, Wogan, who had kept awake so long, suddenly fell fast asleep, and when he woke up again the night was come.  He woke up without a start or even a movement, as was his habit, and sat silently and bitterly reproaching himself for that he had yielded to fatigue.  It was pitch-dark within the carriage; he stared through the window and saw dimly the moving mountain-side, and here and there a clump of trees rush past.  The steady breathing of Gaydon, on his left, and of Mrs. Misset in the corner opposite to Gaydon, showed that those two guardians slept as well.  His reproaches became more bitter and then suddenly ceased, for over against him in the darkness a young, fresh voice was singing very sweetly and very low.  It was the Princess Clementina,