But the stars in their course fought against her.  Silver, having started the machinery, was already handling the steering gear, and bent only upon saving his own miserable self, had put the car in motion.  He could only drive in a slip-slop amateur way and aimlessly zigzagged down the sloping bank which fell away to the high road.  As the motor began to gather speed Miss Greeby ran for her life and liberty, ranging at length breathlessly alongside.  The gypsies tailed behind, shouting.

“Stop, you beast!” screamed Miss Greeby, feeling fear for the first time, and she tried to grab the car for the purpose of swinging herself on board.

But Silver urged it to greater speed.  “I save myself; myself,” he shrieked shrilly and unhinged by deadly terror, “get away; get away.”

In his panic he twisted the wheel in the wrong direction, and the big machine swerved obediently.  The next moment Miss Greeby was knocked down and writhed under the wheels.  She uttered a tragic cry, but little Silver cared for that.  Rendered merciless with fear he sent the car right over her body, and then drove desperately down the hill to gain the hard road.  Miss Greeby, with a broken back, lay on the ground and saw as in a ghastly dream her machine flash roaring along the highway driven by a man who could not manage it.  Even in her pain a smile crept over her pale face.

“He’s done for, the little beast,” she muttered, “he’ll smash.  Lambert!  Lambert!” The man whose name she breathed had arrived as she spoke; and knelt breathlessly beside her to raise her head.  “You—­you—­oh, poor creature!” he gasped.

“I’m done for, Lambert,” she panted in deadly pain, “back broken.  I sinned for you, but—­but you can’t hang me.  Look—­look after Garvington—­Cockleshell too—­look—­look—­Augh!” and she moaned.

“Where are they?”

“In—­in—­the—­cottage,” murmured the woman, and fell back in a fainting condition with a would-be sneering laugh.

Lambert started to his feet with an oath, and leaving the wretched woman to the care of some gypsies, ran back to the glade.  The cottage was a mass of streaming, crackling flames, and there was no water to extinguish these, as he realized with sudden fear.  It was terrible to think that the old woman and Garvington were burning in that furnace, and desperately anxious to save at least one of the two, Lambert tried to enter the door.  But the heat of the fire drove him back, and the flames seemed to roar at his discomfiture.  He could do nothing but stand helplessly and gaze upon what was plainly Garvington’s funeral pyre.

By this time the villagers were making for the wood, and the whole place rang with cries of excitement and dismay.  The wintry scene was revealed only too clearly by the ruddy glare and by the same sinister light.  Lambert suddenly beheld Chaldea at his elbow.  Gripping his arm, she spoke hoarsely, “The tiny rye is dead.  He drove the engine over a bank and it smashed him to a pulp.”