We gasped out broken expressions of a fearful joy; then, seeing that Molly was well, and that the wind-wolf’s teeth had torn nothing from the car, Jack went full speed ahead again, steering along the open Urseren Valley, where we had fleeting glimpses of green fields instead of granite rocks.  Thus we came to Andermatt, where not the eye of a mouse seemed open to mark our quick and stealthy passage.  We were now on that great mountain highroad that slants in a straight line across almost all Switzerland from Coire to Martigny; but we kept on it only for a little while, to steal through Hospenthal—­as dead asleep as the other villages (for Labour had not yet begun to waken in its hard bed), and take the southern road that leads to Italy.

Thus far, audacity had been laurelled by success.  It was near one in the morning, and we were spinning fast up a valley which showed bleakly in the flying lights of our car.  Soon Jack called to us that we had crossed the border line of the Canton Ticino, and presently through the blackness twinkled the little lakes which mark the summit of the Pass.  We were nearly seven thousand feet above the sea, and suddenly, as we crossed the ridge and began to sail down the dismal Val Tremolo towards Airolo, the great wind that had made majestic music all day and night ceased to blow.  We ran into a zone of motionless, ice-cold air, and what seemed an unnatural silence, only the hum of the motor breaking the frozen stillness of these high Alpine solitudes.

The road plunged to lower levels in interminable windings, the car swooping in a series of bird-like flights, exhilarating to the nerves, thrilling to the imagination; for in the blackness that held us we could but guess at abysses which dropped away almost from under the tyres of our wheels.  Sometimes we dashed over foaming rivers, and soon we sped through Airolo, where yet no one moved.  Now the loud-voiced Ticino was our companion, and we swept down through an open valley to Faido, where we met the first human being we had seen since we left Gurtnellen.  It was a very old man, with a red cap, like a stocking, pulled close upon his head.  He had a rake on his shoulder, and we were close on him before he knew; for the car was coasting, and ran with hardly any noise save the whir of the chains.  For a flashing instant that old face shone out of the circle of our lights, concave with astonishment; then we lost it forever.

“No fear that he will telephone to have us stopped lower down,” said Molly.  “He thinks we are supernatural, and will go home and tell his grandchildren that he has seen witches tearing home after a revel up among the glaciers.”