"Yes," he said uncertainly. "To tell you hell-hounds the truth, that solution had already occurred to me. It's been occurring to me vividly ever since I began. But I'm against it. It isn't that I'm afraid, but I want something more difficult. Oh, and don't say, 'Work round the gutter,' first, because it's bad English, and, secondly, because no man born of woman could 'work round' this razor-edged conduit with a hundredweight of drain-pipe round his neck. What I want is a definite instruction which is neither murderous nor futile. Burn it, you handed me enough slush when I was rising. Why the hell can't you slobber out something to help me down?" By the time his descent was accomplished, it was past four o'clock--summer time--and there was a pale cast about the sweet moonlight that told of the coming of another dawn. "I say," said Jill suddenly, "don't let's go to bed." "No, don't let's," said Berry, with a hysterical laugh. "Let's--let's absolutely refuse." Jill went on breathlessly-- "Let's go for a run towards Lourdes and see the sun rise over the mountains." Our first impulse was to denounce the idea. Upon examination, however, its hidden value emerged. We were sick and tired of trying to wake the servants; to effect an entrance was seemingly out of the question; to spend another two hours wandering about the garden or wooing slumber in the cars was not at all to our liking. Finally, we decided that, since we should be back before the world proper was astir, our appearance, if it was noticed at all, would but afford a few peasants an experience which they could relate with relish for many years, and that, since the sky was cloudless, so convenient an occasion of observing a very famous effect should not be rejected. Five minutes later Ping and Pong slid silently under the Pont Oscar II. and so down a winding hill, out of the sleeping town and on to the Bizanos road. Our headlights were powerful, the road was not too bad, and the world was empty... I let Jonah, who was leading, get well away, and then gave the car her head. Well as we knew it, our way seemed unfamiliar. We saw the countryside as through a glass darkly. A shadowy file of poplars, a grey promise of meadowland, a sable thicket, far in the distance a great blurred mass rearing a sombre head, a chain of silent villages seemingly twined about our road, and once in a long while the broad, brave flash of laughing water--these and their ghostly like made up our changing neighbourhood. Then came a link in the chain that even Wizard Night could not transfigure--sweet, storied Coarraze, fencing our way with its peculiar pride of church and state; three miles ahead, hoary Bétharram, defender of the faith, lent us its famous bridge--at the toll of a break-neck turn, of which no manner of moonshine can cheat the memory. We were nearing Lourdes now, but there was no sign of Jonah. I began to wonder whether my cousin was faring farther afield.... It was so.