car with leather curtains whose windows of mica had long since been
cracked and torn away. The snow was hissing on the radiator and melting
on the road, and there seemed no wind left anywhere to drive the weight
of the mauve cloud further across the sky. It hung solid and low above
them, so that between the surface of the earth and the floor of the sky
there was only a foggy tunnel in which the road could be seen a few
yards ahead.

As they drove forward the windscreen became filmed with melting snow.
Fanny unscrewed it and tilted it open, and the Bearskin fumbled unhappily
at his collar to close every chink and cranny in his mossy hide.

They were climbing higher and higher across an endless plateau, and at
last a voice called from the back, "We must look at the map." It was a
voice of doubt and distrust that any road could be right road which
held so much discomfort.

Fanny stopped and pulled her map from behind her back, where she was
keeping it dry. "It's all right," she showed them, leaning over the back
and holding the map towards them. Then she discovered that the back seat
was empty, and her clients were huddled among the petrol tins and rugs
upon the floor.

"You must be miserable! It's so much colder in the back. See, here's the
big road that we must avoid, going off into Luxembourg, and here's ours,
running downhill in another mile."

They believed her, being too cramped and miserable to take more than a
querulous interest. In another half-hour the snow ceased, and as they
glided down the long hill on the other side of the plateau in a bed of