The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap
of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her
astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was
witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with
rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of
stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of
strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea
of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he
aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two
cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be
lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and
boulders, and made good the breach.

"Excellent!" ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. "But I am
wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in
and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the
farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and
lay on the whip!"

This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had
to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover
and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the
horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was.
On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver
had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing,
held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the _calash_, and
only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on
Claudius' shoulders. At this contact--at the sight of those roseate,
dimpled hands--he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured
himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of