"In the first place," he began, "we are supposed to have purposely irritated an extremely unpleasant old snake to the point of biting, perhaps fatally, a French chauffeur. If fatally, the law wants us on that account. In the second place, we have stolen a large and costly touring car and are apparently occupied in making away with it as fast as possible. And the law wants us on that account. In the third place, we have violated the speed regulations of Huntersville and refused to stop when called upon to answer for it, and the law wants us on that account. In the fourth place, we have knocked down and, for all I know, seriously injured an official of Huntersville, and the law wants us on that account. Do I make myself clear?" "Quite clear," she replied soberly, and then, without the slightest warning, she burst into a rich gurgle of laughter, so rollicking and infectious that Antony had joined her before he realised it, and the wood rang with their united mirth. The massive mechanism, whose least lever they could not have explained, had it been to save their lives, rolled ponderously along, clanking and hissing beneath them; and they, perched like flippant butterflies on its upholstered surface, chuckled and trilled and rejoiced in their youth. As the Indian child leads the mighty elephant by a leash of meadow grass, so Antony directed his car with a flick of the wrist, and like the child thought nothing of what he did, save that it was amusing and showed forth his mightiness. Death glided along beside them, revolving softly with each turn of the four broad tires; terror lurked at every vine-twisted bend in the road; not a smooth beech nor a rough chestnut but might have hidden behind it some horrid destiny--and they rode on lightly, as the froth on the breaker before it crashes on the beach. Upon Antony, indeed, positive serenity had fallen, and a consciousness of readiness for any emergency. It was with some strong sense of this that he leaned down to his companion and said with a masterful smile--the smile of one whose thorough acquaintance with himself precludes any idea of self-gratulation: "Perhaps, my dear Miss Nette, it is, after all, as well that you have one of us despised young fellows with you to-day? Even the most fascinating of greybeards might have found this crisis a little too much for him?"