Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/81

Rh has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the creature had n't looked alive?

Although he did n't say much, the chauffeur (or "shuvvie" as he scornfully names himself) knew all about Robert Macaire and Caspard De Besse—knew more about them than I, also their escapades on this road over the Esterels, and in the mountain fastnesses, when highwaymen were as fashionable as motor-cars are now. I 'd forgotten that it was this part of the world where they earned their bread and fame; and was quite thrilled to hear that the ghost of De Besse is supposed to keep on, as a permanent residence, his old shelter cave near the summit of strangely shaped Mont Vinaigre. I 'm sure, though, even if we 'd passed his pitch at midnight instead of midday, he would n't have dared pop out and cry "Stand and deliver!" to a sixty-horse-power Aigle.

I almost wished it were night, as we swooped over mountain tops, our eyes plunging down the deep gorges, and dropping with fearful joy over precipices, for the effect would have been more solemn, more mysterious. I could imagine that the fantastically formed rocks which loomed above us or stood ranged far below would have looked by moonlight like statues and busts of Titans, carved to show poor little humanity such creatures as a dead world had known. But it is hard for one's imagination to do the best of which it feels capable when one is dying for lunch.

Even the old "Murder Inn," which my companion obligingly pointed out, did n't give me the thrill it ought, because time was getting on when we flew past it, and