horizon. The weary way to Thionville unfurled before them, furnaces to
the left and flat grass prairie to the right--little villages and
clustering houses went by them, and Thionville itself, with its
tramlines and faint air of Manchester, drew near. Beyond Thionville the
road changed colour abruptly, and stretched red and gravelly before
them. The frost deepened, the wheels bit harder on the road surface, the
grass-fields sparkled with a brittle light, and scanty winter orchards
sprang up beside the road, which narrowed down and became a lane of
beautiful surface. Not for long, however, for the surface changed again,
and long hours set in when the car had to be held desperately with foot
and hand brake to save the springs, and the accelerator could only be
touched to be relinquished.

Fanny, hardly sad any more, but busy and hungry, secretly lifted the
corner of her sleeve to peer at her wrist-watch, and seeing that it was
half-past twelve, began to wonder how soon they would decide to sit down
by the roadside for their lunch. She fumbled in the pocket of the car,
but the last piece of chocolate had either been eaten or had slipped
down between the leather and the wood. She could bring up nothing better
than an old postcard, a hairpin, and a forgotten scrap of
chamois-leather.

At last they stopped for lunch, choosing a spot where a hedge rose
wirily against the midday sky, and spread the rugs on the frozen grass.
The sudden cessation of movement and noise brought a stillness into the
landscape; a child's voice startled them from the outskirts of a village
beyond, and the crackle of a wheelbarrow that was being driven along
the dry road.

The third man, who had blackberry eyes, and glasses which enlarged them,