For a time no danger seemed to threaten. Kate was not only fearless as a passenger, but equally intrepid at the wheel. Many a time and oft she had driven her father's highest-powered car at dizzying speeds along worse roads than the one her machine was now following. Velocity was to her a kind of stimulant, wonderfully pleasurable; and now, realizing nothing of the truth that Herrick was badly the worse for liquor, she leaned back in the tonneau, breathed the keen slashing air with delight, and let her eyes wander over the swiftly-changing panorama of forest, valley, lake and hill that, in ever new and more radiant beauty, sped away, away, as the huge car leaped down the smooth and rushing road. Dust and pebbles flew in the wake of the machine, as it gathered velocity. Beneath it, the highway sped like an endless white ribbon, whirling back and away with smooth rapidity. No common road, this, but one which the State authorities had very obligingly built especially for the use of millionaires' motor cars, all through the region of country-clubs, parks, bungalows and summer-resorts dotting the west shore region of the Hudson. Let the farmer truck his produce through mud and ruts, if he would. Let the country folk drive their ramshackle buggies over rocks and stumps, if they so chose. Nothing of that sort for millionaires! No, _they_ must have macadam and smooth, long curves, easy grades and--where the road swung high above the gleaming river--retaining walls to guard them from plunging into the palisaded abyss below. At just such a place it was, where the road made a sharper turn than any the drunken chauffeur had reckoned on, that catastrophe leaped out to shatter the rushing car. Only a minute before, Kate--a little uneasy now, at the truly reckless speeding of the driver, and at the daredevil way in which he was taking curves without either sounding his siren or reducing speed--had touched him on the shoulder, with a command: "Not _quite_ so fast, Herrick! Be careful!" His only answer had been a drunken laugh. "Careful nothing!" he slobbered, to himself. "You wanted speed--an' now--hc!--b'Jesus, you _get_--hc!--speed! _I_ ain't 'fraid--are--hc!--_you_?" She had not heard the words, but had divined their meaning. "Herrick!" she commanded sharply, leaning forward. "What's the matter with you? Obey me, do you hear? Not so fast!" A whiff of alcoholic breath suddenly told her the truth. For a second she sat there, as though petrified, with fear now for the first time clutching at her heart. "Stop at once!" she cried, gripping the man by the collar of his livery. "You--you're drunk, Herrick! I--I'll have you discharged, at once, when we get home. Stop, do you hear me? You're not fit to drive. I'll take the wheel myself!" But Herrick, hopelessly under the influence of the poison, which had now produced its full effect, paid no heed.