"By jove!" exclaimed Robin. "Drive on,—you! But wait! Let me take you to the Inn, Marie. It—"
"No! I may not accept M'sieur's thoughtful invitation. Bon soir, M'sieur."
She was off like a flash. Robin leaped nimbly into the cab.
"Pingari's, driver!" he said, his heart thumping once more.
"Very good, sir," and they were off at a lively rate, rattling quite gaily over the cobble-stones.
Pingari's is the jumping-off place. It stands at the sharp corner of an elbow in the mountain, with an almost sheer drop of a thousand feet into the quarries below. A low-roofed, rambling building, once used as a troop-house for nomadic fighting-men who came from all parts of the principality on draft by feudal barons in the days before real law obtained, it was something of a historic place. Parts of the structure are said to be no less than five hundred years old, but time and avarice have relegated history to a rather uncertain background, and unless one is pretty well up in the traditions of the town, he may be taken in nicely by shameless attendants who make no distinction between the old and the new so long as it pays them to procrastinate.
As a matter of fact, the walls of the ancient troop-house surround what is now considered the kitchen, and one never steps inside of them unless he happens to be connected in a somewhat menial way with the green grocer, the fish-monger, the butcher or the poultry-man. The wonderful vine-covered porches, reeking with signs of decay and tottering with age, are in truth very substantial affairs constructed by an ancestor of the present Signor Pingari no longer ago than the Napoleonic era—which is quite recent as things go in Graustark.
Hobbs drove bravely into the court yard, shouted orders to a couple of hostlers and descended from the box. The Magyar band was playing blithely to the scattered occupants of the porches overlooking the precipice.
"'Ere we are, sir," said he to the Prince, as he jerked open the door of the cab. "Shall I wait, sir?"
"Certainly," said Robin, climbing out. "I am a long way from home, my good man."