The priest, however, persisted and, word by word, he dragged Benny’s story from him. The Englishman, he said, would be competing for the great prize offered by the English editor. It was a fine ambition, and one to deserve a blessing. Let him not despair because the machine was broken. There were clever lads at the monastery, and he, Felix Villari, was no mean mechanic. He would guard the secrets as his own, and pledge his word that the machine should be ready. Grown almost angry at his optimism, and deriding his pretensions, Benny lifted his bruised arm and asked for what kind of a prize that would fly. It was idle to speak of flight to such a man at such a time. Here was the state of the game when Benny met Luton Delayne upon the mountain road, and stood gaping at "the ghost." His first idea was to get away from the place altogether, to cut Andana, and to forget both his disappointment and the source of it. Then a better spirit came to his aid, and he began to remember the many stories which Holmswell had told of the baronet, and to wonder how many of them were true. Lily Delayne was quite alone in this place; she herself had told him that she had no friends. He knew that his own good-will might be worth something to her; but for quite a long time he had no courage to pursue the idea. A sense of finality attended this amazing discovery as a sense of finality had been associated with his mishap in the earlier hours of the day. Had Benny’s mind been absolutely commonplace, and had he been hide-bound by the conventions, perchance the matter would have ended there and then. An early train would have carried him from Sierre to London, and he might very well have lived out his life as a very ordinary mechanic in a very ordinary workshop. In this way has the story of hundreds of good fellows, blessed with no common measure of talent, been written; and this might have been his own fate but for a certain hardening of determination which failure provoked. The great prize was lost for a certainty, the new and dazzling hope which had come into his life yesterday had been shattered beyond all belief: and yet, when he had communed with himself for the best part of an hour on the narrow road which led up to the chalet, he took a sudden resolution and acted upon it without an instant’s delay. He would see Lily Delayne immediately and hear from her own lips any story she might have to tell him. That she would have a story he firmly believed, and quickened by the pleasing idea of a friendship which must be beyond all question altruistic, he returned at once to the hotel and sent up a message to her. Five minutes later he was in her room, and he perceived at a glance that she had been weeping. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kennaird," he said, "but I think you left this at the chalet?"