The road plunged to lower levels in interminable windings, the car swooping in a series of bird-like flights, exhilarating to the nerves, thrilling to the imagination; for in the blackness that held us we could but guess at abysses which dropped away almost from under the tyres of our wheels. Sometimes we dashed over foaming rivers, and soon we sped through Airolo, where yet no one moved. Now the loud-voiced Ticino was our companion, and we swept down through an open valley to Faido, where we met the first human being we had seen since we left Gurtnellen. It was a very old man, with a red cap, like a stocking, pulled close upon his head. He had a rake on his shoulder, and we were close on him before he knew; for the car was coasting, and ran with hardly any noise save the whir of the chains. For a flashing instant that old face shone out of the circle of our lights, concave with astonishment; then we lost it forever. "No fear that _he_ will telephone to have us stopped lower down," said Molly. "He thinks we are supernatural, and will go home and tell his grandchildren that he has seen witches tearing home after a revel up among the glaciers." Faster still the car flew down the road. The air that streamed past us held the faint, elusive perfume of Italy, which softly hints the presence of the walnut, the chestnut, and the grape. Through village after village we swept at speed, our lamps shining now on mulberry and fig trees, and on vines trained over trellises held up by splintered granite slabs. Next we came suddenly upon an Italian-looking town with bad _pavé_ and dimly lighted streets, where three or four workmen, early astir, stared at us in bewilderment. It was Bellinzona; but passing through, we came out presently on the margin of an immense sheet of water, and it was only in Locarno on the edge of Lago Maggiore, when dawn was paling the eastern sky, that Jack at last drew rein. No one was tired; no one wanted to rest. On the contrary, our rapid flight over the Alps had intoxicated us with the sense of speed; and we were all excitedly for going on until we should reach the frontier. As pink dawn blossomed in the sky, like a heavenly orchard, and the mountain tops were beaten into copper, we glided along the edge of the lake, past picturesque villages and _campanili_, and cypress trees. At the Italian frontier there were the usual tedious formalities of payment and sealing the car with a leaden seal; but when all this was done by sleepy officials, surly at our early passage, though little recking of our crimes, we sailed on again, Molly driving now, through a landscape magically clear in the young morning light.