“Take the northern fork, although you would seem to be going very different to your aim.  At the lane I spoke of, stop—­but I shall be at your elbow to prompt you.”

The drive was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such scanty room, and the prattle which flowed from her lips.

She was happy to serve him again; she had liked him from the first sight in the hall; they did not seem to be strangers; he was like she knew not whom, but she could swear the resemblance was perfect!  She had been read such a lecture by her manager and the police sub-chief, but, pooh! what were such men but the knob on a post—­the post remained and the knob was unscrewed for another to be put on every now and then.  They had threatened but she was not a strolling player who feared the lock-up and the House of Correction.  They would think twice before they sent a child of the Vieradlers into the Home of the Unrepentant Magdalens! and all this intermixed with snatches of song and flashes of original wit at the expense of the police and soldiers and the citizens.

And the flight into Italy with the Marchioness famous for proteges as other old ladies for keeping cats or parrots?  It was true she had made her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she had accompanied the eccentric dame.  But she had remained in Munich to help the man who was endeared to her.

Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius quiet on that point.

Eight minutes passed like one, when—­“Stop!” she exclaimed, and was out beside him without a helping hand and upon the dusty road.

The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap of rubbish.  Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid.  There was witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea 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!”