"If we are to reach Rome at sunset, some one must lend a hand at the wheel," said the chauffeur, as the children finished eating their lunch. "There is not a moment to lose, and I, also, am hungry."

Rafael sprang at once to his side. He had longed to drive the automobile from the very moment they began the journey from Florence, and had often sat on the seat beside the chauffeur, watching him, and asking him questions about his work.

There followed a glorious afternoon for the boy. He was a ready pupil, the roads were good, and the friendly chauffeur a careful teacher.

They passed peasant women in gay bodices, with folded handkerchiefs on their heads and long earrings in their ears, carrying baskets of fruit on their arms. They passed peasant men driving donkeys or oxen, who smiled at them from under hats decorated with pompons of colored paper and tinsel. Geese ran out to hiss at them as they flew by, and hens and chickens fluttered out of their way; but Rafael had eyes only for the road.

They passed lemon groves and rose-gardens, and Edith was grieved because Rafael could not enjoy with her every new and strange sight.

"I wanted you to tell me more about the Roman ruins," she said.

But the boy tossed a merry smile back at her for answer. "We will speak more about those things when we are in Rome," he said. "I can think of nothing now but flying," and he bent his eyes again to the road.

At last they began the descent of a lofty hill, and the car glided into the road which is the old Flaminian Way, leading directly to the city.

Edith felt the thrill which always stirs the heart when one first draws near to the Eternal City. She leaned forward and said to the chauffeur, "How do you feel, to be riding toward Rome?"

For answer the man pointed to the sun, which was low in the western sky. "There is only another hour of sunlight," he said with a smile.

"Oh, shall we fail to reach the Golden Milestone at sunset?" the girl asked, as anxiously as if it were the most important thing in the world to win their Marathon run.

But Rafael suddenly lifted a hand from the wheel. "Ecco!" he said, pointing to the distant South.

Edith followed the direction of his finger. Far away she saw the great dome of a cathedral rising toward the clouds.

"Rome! St. Peter's!" she shouted.

The boy nodded. The splendor of the ancient city flashed into his mind. He saw as in a dream the magnificent temples and palaces, the triumphal processions, the chariot-races, the games and combats of the early Romans, about which his mother had told him so many stories.

"It is a wonderful city," he said. "What tales those old walls could tell!"

As they crossed the River Tiber he heard Edith murmur behind him, "Oh, Tiber, Father Tiber, to whom the Romans pray!" and then it seemed but a moment before they were rolling through a massive stone gateway, and the chauffeur had taken the wheel.

As Rafael lifted his eyes to look about him once more, they looked straight into the eyes of a man who was riding in the opposite direction, and he smiled. He did not know that he had smiled, nor that this man was the king of Italy. His thoughts were back again with the conquerors of the early days, and the splendors of the ancient city.

But the king had noticed the boy, and turned to look after him. "That was the spirit of the old Romans looking from his eyes," he said to his attendant.

The last rays of the setting sun fell upon the scarred columns of the ruined Forum, as the car rounded the base of the Capitoline Hill and stopped at the spot where the Golden Milestone once marked the beginning of the Roman roads.

Rafael was speechless; but Edith took the olive wreath from the hamper with exclamations of delight.

"Where will you have it?" she asked the chauffeur, "on your head or your wheel?"

"It belongs to the car triumphal," he answered as they turned and moved cautiously through the street-car tracks of modern Rome.

"There could never have been such a record run made by your kings and emperors of olden times," said the girl proudly to Rafael.

But he was too happy with his thoughts to make any reply, and Edith turned her attention to the conversation between her mother and the chauffeur.

"To the Continental Hotel," Mrs. Sprague was saying, and all too soon they had crossed the city, and were welcomed and given rooms in the hotel. The chauffeur bade them good-bye, and their Marathon run was a thing of the past.