He dropped the papers and, clasping his knees in his arms, sat staring out into the infernal blaze of sunset.

“The world,” he said slowly, “pays little attention to that agglomeration of cantons called Switzerland.  The few among us who know anything about its government might recollect that there are twenty-six cantons—­the list begins, Aargau, Appenzell, Ausser-Rhoden, Inner-Rhoden—­you may remember—­and ends with Valais, Vaud, Zug, and Zurich.  And Les Errues is the twenty-seventh canton!”

“Yes,” said the girl in a low voice, “the evidence lies at your feet.”

“Surely, surely,” he muttered, his fixed gaze lost on the crimson celestial conflagration.  She said, thinking aloud, and her clear eyes on him: 

“Then, of the Great Secret, we have learned this much anyway—­that there exists in Switzerland a secret canton called Les Errues; that it is practically Hun territory; that it masks what they call their Great Secret; that their ownership or domination of Les Errues is probably a price paid secretly by the Swiss government for its national freedom and that this arrangement is absolutely unknown to anybody in the world outside of the Imperial Hun government and the few Swiss who have inherited, politically, a terrible knowledge of this bargain dating back, probably, from 1870.”

“That is the situation we are confronting,” admitted McKay calmly.

She said with perfect simplicity:  “Of course we must go into Les Errues.”

“Of course, comrade.  How?”

He had no plan—­could have none.  She knew it.  Her question was merely meant to convey to him a subtle confirmation of her loyalty and courage.  She scarcely expected to escape a dreadful fate on this quest—­did not quite see how either of them could really hope to come out alive.  But that they could discover the Great Secret of the Hun, and convey to the world by means of their pigeons some details of the discovery, she felt reasonably certain.  She had much faith in the arrangements they had made to do this.

“One thing worries me a lot,” remarked McKay pleasantly.

“Food supply?”

He nodded.

She said:  “Now that the Boche have left Mount Terrible—­except that wretched creature whose bones lie on the shelf below—­we might venture to kill whatever game we can find.”

“I’m going to,” he said.  “The Swiss troops have cleared out.  I’ve got to risk it.  Of course, down there in Les Errues, some Hun guarding some secret chamois trail into the forbidden wilderness may hear our shots.”

“We shall have to take that chance,” she remarked.

He said in the low, quiet voice which always thrilled her a little:  “You poor child—­you are hungry.”

“So are you, Kay.”

“Hungry?  These rations act like cocktails:  I could barbecue a roebuck and finish him with you at one sitting!”

“Monsieur et Madame Gargantua,” she mocked him with her enchanting laughter.  Then, wistful:  “Kay, did you see that very fat and saucy auerhahn which the Swiss soldiers scared out of the pines down there?”