For the first hundred and thirty miles or so of the journey the Pallas Athene did all that could be expected of an eight-cylinder sports model driven by a young man who did not shrink from paying an occasional fine. The needle of the speedometer often flickered past the sixty miles mark. The average speed fell little short of double that which our legislators—the same people who made the laws about beer—consider sufficient. Ilchester was reached in less than four hours. Jimmy, slowing down slightly through the long narrow street of the village, congratulated himself and his passengers on the achievement.

"I call that a satisfactory record so far," he said, "and we haven't killed or maimed so much as a dog, which just shows the advantage of careful driving."

He congratulated himself too soon. The inhabitants of Ilchester, indeed, escaped with their lives. Three main roads unite to run through their village, so they have learnt to be exceedingly alert and active. Lord Colavon had not so much as a broken collar-bone on his conscience when he pressed his foot on the accelerator at the end of the village. But a few miles along the road the engine began to give trouble. Jimmy was perfectly sure that he knew what was the matter with it. He spent ten minutes in oily work with a spanner. After that, things became rapidly worse. Noises of the most terrifying kind became frequent, and it was no longer possible to persuade the Pallas Athene to do more than thirty miles an hour on a level stretch of road.

Jimmy, less confident than he had been that he knew what was the matter, left his direct road and went to Taunton. There he sought help in a garage while the two girls had tea. The mechanic, an intelligent and competent man, shook his head over the Pallas Athene. He preferred a soberer and more reliable kind of car, even if it could not be driven very fast. In his opinion it would be folly to go on any farther, and he spoke vaguely of telegraphing to the makers of the car for some spare parts.

"Spare parts be damned," said Jimmy. "That means waiting here for the best part of a week."

The mechanic could not deny that the getting of spare parts is often a tedious business, especially—here he glanced with dislike at the Pallas Athene—"from the makers of cars like that."

"Can't you patch her up somehow," said Jimmy, "so that I can push on another forty or fifty miles? I haven't much more than that to do."

"I can patch her up," said the mechanic, "but there's no man living can tell how far she'll run afterwards."

Being a cautious man, experienced in the ways of motor-cars, he refused, even when pressed, to give any exact estimate of the distance which the patched Pallas Athene might run. The only thing he regarded as certain was that she would break down completely in the end.

"It might be two miles out of the town," he said, "or it might be a hundred."

"Do the best you can with her while I'm getting a cup of tea," said Jimmy. "Then fill up her tank and give her a pint of oil. I'll risk it."

The behaviour of the Pallas Athene after leaving Taunton was excellent. It may have been that the hour's rest in the garage revived her. More probably she was pleased by the attention she received from the mechanic. All women, even dignified Greek goddesses, like being fussed over and petted. Jimmy was moderate in his demands for speed and did not demand anything more than what he called "a funeral trot" of thirty-five miles an hour. Exeter was passed successfully, and the time came when the main road must be left for the last stage of the journey.

Jimmy, gaining confidence, ran at a fair speed up and down some abrupt hills on roads marked on the maps in inferior colours, occasionally not coloured at all. On a lonely open stretch of one of what the map makers describe as "other metalled roads, narrow," the breakdown, prophesied by the Taunton mechanic, came. Without so much as a warning shriek or a death rattle the Pallas Athene gasped and stopped.

Jimmy did all that a man could do. He lay on his back and screwed nuts. He lay on his side and screwed other nuts. He crawled on his stomach. He knelt, stooped, crouched, tapped and hammered. Like the good Samaritan, he poured in oil and would have poured in wine too if he had had any. Beth and Mary encouraged him and tried to help him. They spread a whole kit of tools out on a bank on the side of the road and very soon learned to distinguish between a double-ended spanner, a box spanner and an adjustable spanner, often handed the right weapon to Jimmy without giving him a wrong one more than a couple of times first.

"Well I'm damned if I know what's wrong," said Jimmy, after an hour's experimental effort. "If only the wretched thing had held out another quarter of an hour we'd have been there, we can't be more than seven or eight miles from Morriton St. James, and Uncle Evie's house is just outside."

"Couldn't Mary and I walk on," said Beth, "and send somebody back for you? There must be a car in the village?"

"Morriton St. James is a town, not a village," said Jimmy, "and there are lots of cars, but it would take you the best part of three hours to get there—if you ever got there at all. Look at Mary's shoes, and your own are no better."

Mary exhibited, for admiration or contempt, a delicate suÈde shoe, certainly not intended for long walks over rough roads.

"I'd go myself," said Jimmy, "but I hate leaving you two alone in a place like this. I never saw such a road in my life. Not a blessed thing has passed, going either way since the Pallas Athene lay down and died."

"I'll do a lisp next week," said Beth, "on the dangerously congested condition of our country roads."

"I don't suppose anything ever does pass or ever will," said Jimmy.

He had been too optimistic at Ilchester over the performances of the Pallas Athene. He was too pessimistic now about the traffic on the road to Morriton St. James. A moving object appeared far off. The sound of clanging metal reached their ears. A very old Ford car came rattling towards them at a steady, but apparently laborious, twenty miles an hour. At the steering wheel sat James Hinton of the Anchor Inn in Hailey Compton.

Jimmy was determined not to be passed by. There are a few motorists as indifferent to the calls of charity as if they were priests or Levites, who go their way without succouring those in distress on the roadside. The driver of the Ford might be such a man. Jimmy made sure that he would at least stop by standing with outstretched hands in the middle of the road. The Pallas Athene, her wheels against one bank, occupied about one third of the road, which was not very wide. Jimmy, half-way to the other bank, made passing impossible without homicide. He need not have taken such extreme measures. James Hinton pulled up and inquired politely what was the matter and whether he could be of any use.

"If you'll take these two ladies into Morriton St. James," said Jimmy, "and send someone back to tow this car I shall be greatly obliged, and——"

He felt in his pocket for a coin, looking hard at James Hinton, to discover, if possible, whether he was the sort of man to whom a tip should be offered. James Hinton, since he pulled up, had been looking hard at Jimmy. In spite of the smears of oily dust which were on his face and his generally dishevelled appearance, he was recognisable.

"Certainly, my lord," he said. "It will be nothing but a pleasure to oblige your lordship in any possible way. Would it be convenient if I was to take the two ladies straight to the Manor House. It occurs to me that your lordship may intend to pay a visit to Sir Evelyn Dent, your lordship's uncle."

"I say," said Jimmy. "You seem to know all about me, and I'm delighted to meet you again and all that; but—damned stupid of me, of course—I can't for the life of me recollect who you are."

"Your lordship wouldn't recollect me," said Hinton. "It's not to be expected that you would; but I was in the late earl's service as first footman, and I had the honour of valetting your lordship sometimes lately when you stayed with Lord Dollman without bringing your own man."

"Got you now," said Jimmy. "You're the fellow Dolly thought such a lot of. Said he never knew anyone with such a talent for spotting winners. Anyhow, Dolly used to make pots while he had you."

"Very kind of his lordship to say so," said Hinton. "It's always been my wish to give satisfaction."

"I suppose you don't happen to be out of a job now. If you cared to come to me—— What about it?"

"Very kind of your lordship," said Hinton, "but I've retired from gentlemen's service. But of course if I could be of any use to your lordship——"

"You can and shall," said Jimmy. "You shall take these two ladies to the Manor House."

"Jimmy, dear," said Mary, catching his arm, "I daren't, simply daren't face your uncle without you. I don't believe Beth would either. He wouldn't know who we were."

"It would be a bit awkward," said Beth. "I don't suppose Sir Evelyn has so much as heard our names."

She was wrong about that. Sir Evelyn had heard her name very often since the idea of the smuggling pageant occurred to Mrs. Eames. He had even read, with gratification, every lisp of Lilith's in which his name had been mentioned since Beth began her campaign of advertising the pageant.

James Hinton, who had left his seat and was arranging the back part of his car for the reception of ladies, understood the situation, or thought he did. In fact he understood it too well, believing it to be rather more awkward than it actually was. It was perfectly plain to him that the two girls did not belong to the class which habitually visits the houses of our higher aristocracy. Since, in spite of that, they spoke to Lord Colavon as "Jimmy, dear," he assumed that they belonged to another class which could not be introduced to Jimmy's aunts, or even to his uncle without some explanation.

"If I might be allowed to make a suggestion, my lord," he said, "why not permit me to tow your car into Morriton St. James and then your lordship could accompany the ladies to the Manor House."

Jimmy looked at the derelict Pallas Athene. She was a long, low car, and her body sloped back in lines rather like the rake of the masts of a pirate schooner in a novel. Her delicate pale blue paint still shone, though covered with the dust of the long journey. Her aluminium bonnet glistened in the rays of the setting sun. Her great balloon tyres lay like coiled monsters under her wide black wings. He looked at Hinton's Ford, squat, dumpy, perched absurdly above her little wheels. He noted the battered mud guards, the chipped paint, the tattered hood strapped into an untidy bundle at the back. A pang of acute humiliation gripped him hard.

"Can you do it?" he asked with a sigh.

"On low gear," said Hinton. "There is no doubt that we can do it on low gear. Your lordship has not perhaps had much experience of Fords."

"None," said Jimmy bitterly.

"Then perhaps your lordship will excuse my saying that a Ford will do anything in low gear."

"If so," said Jimmy, with a burst of real magnanimity, "a Ford is a damned sight better car than a Pallas Athene eight cylinder sports model. It won't do anything on any gear."

A really good servant, accustomed to the best houses, is never found wanting, or unable to meet any demand made on him. Asked suddenly in the middle of the afternoon for tripe and onions he displays no astonishment; but in a short time brings tripe and onions into the drawing-room, in a nice dish on a silver salver. Told, at luncheon, that a complete outfit for water polo is required immediately afterwards for a party of eight, he produces, without fuss or protest, bathing suits, balloons and everything else required. James Hinton had been a thoroughly good servant, one of the very best in England, a country which produces the best servants in the world.

From the locker under the back seat of his car he took a long and reliable rope. It was as if he had fully expected to come upon a derelict Pallas Athene when he left home in the afternoon.

The two girls were packed into the back seat of the Ford with many polite apologies. James Hinton took his seat, rigidly upright in front. Jimmy, crushed with shame, crouched over the steering wheel of the Pallas Athene.

The drive began with a gallant effort of Hinton's to be better than his word. He tried the Ford on her top gear. She clanged, snorted, missed fire on one plug after another, made spasmodic jumps and finally stopped, her engine stalled. James Hinton got out, worked hard at the handle for a while and started again. This time he made no attempt to get out of low gear. The progress was slow. On the slightest incline it dropped to about four miles an hour. On a serious hill it became a crawl. Steam rose from the Ford's radiator like smoke from the funnel of a locomotive. The water inside could be heard boiling furiously. Oily smoke rose occasionally between the floor boards at Hinton's feet. The noise was terrific. The heat, even in the back part of the car where the two girls sat, was great. For Hinton it was blasting. But he stuck to his post and the car stuck to its work. She had emerged, a giddy young thing from the works in Detroit eleven years before. Time had sobered her, but had not broken that determination to get somewhere, somehow, which is the characteristic of all Fords of all ages.

The eight miles to Morriton St. James were accomplished in something a little over an hour. The procession stopped at the door of the principal garage in the town and a crowd quickly gathered round.

"That car," said Jimmy to the proprietor of the garage, "cost me twelve hundred pounds this morning. I'll swap it for one like James Hinton's if you happen to have such a thing in stock."

The garage owner refused to make the exchange. He was an honest man and would not take advantage of a stranger whose nervous system was wrecked. Besides, it would have been very difficult to dispose of the Pallas Athene sports model at any price in Morriton St. James, a town inhabited by sober and cautious people.