really crawling and staggering up the spurs of the menacing mountain range.
Between Ezza's cheery denial of the danger and Muscari's boisterous
defiance of it, the financial family were firm in their original purpose;
and Muscari made his mountain journey coincide with theirs.
A more surprising feature was the appearance at the coast-town station
of the little priest of the restaurant; he alleged merely
that business led him also to cross the mountains of the midland.
But young Harrogate could not but connect his presence with
the mystical fears and warnings of yesterday.

The coach was a kind of commodious wagonette, invented by
the modernist talent of the courier, who dominated the expedition
with his scientific activity and breezy wit. The theory of danger from
thieves was banished from thought and speech; though so far conceded
in formal act that some slight protection was employed. The courier
and the young banker carried loaded revolvers, and Muscari
(with much boyish gratification) buckled on a kind of cutlass
under his black cloak.

He had planted his person at a flying leap next to
the lovely Englishwoman; on the other side of her sat the priest,
whose name was Brown and who was fortunately a silent individual;
the courier and the father and son were on the banc behind.
Muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the peril,
and his talk to Ethel might well have made her think him a maniac.
But there was something in the crazy and gorgeous ascent,
amid crags like peaks loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged
her spirit up alone with his into purple preposterous heavens
with wheeling suns. The white road climbed like a white cat;
it spanned sunless chasms like a tight-rope; it was flung round