casional slight breezes were very welcome.

The outlook was really magnificent; a broad prospect of rolling pasturage,
hilly pasturage, and wooded mountains; the grass-lands and grassy
hillsides diversified by scattered trees, clumps of trees and small
groves; the lower levels of woodland broken by grassy glades; the brighter
green of the forests of chestnut, beech, and oak merging imperceptibly
into the darker green of the pine-forests; the score of farms in sight
brilliant in the green landscapes like semi-jewels; all the wide prospect
glowing under a deep blue sky, varied by a very few very white clouds, the
intense sunlight beating down on everything. It was a perfect summer day.

I conned the road, on which I saw only the rear of a column of wagons
convoying arena-beasts receding over the hilltops to southwards, and the
normal traffic, horsemen or two-horse carriages or wagons far apart and
few. I dozed.

I must have slept a full hour. I waked hot, but much refreshed, feeling
lively and full of interest in what was to come. Just after I waked I saw
the constabulary, the officers and about a third of the men on horseback,
the rest afoot, come up the road from the direction of their post, which
was south of the crag. The infantrymen, tramped their fastest and the
mounted men kept pace with them. They were evidently off on their wild-
goose chase. As they came into sight below me, after passing my perch, I
watched them double-quick northwards and wheel to their right into the
first crossroad. They were barely out of sight among the forested hills
when I saw momentarily, on the Highway, fully four miles to northward, on
a sunlit hilltop, what I took to be the first wagon of a train of teams
drawing cages of arena-beasts. I watched the road in that direction. What
I saw confirmed my conjecture. Soon the road to northward was filled from
its farthest visible hilltop to just below my crag with wagon-teams such
as I had many times watched transporting cages of lions, tigers, leopards,
panthers and the like. I made out also some cages which I was certain
contained hyenas.

Every little while I glanced the other way. Just as the first wagons of
the long train vanished from my sight into that section of the road
immediately below me where my crag hid it from my view, I saw appear on a
hilltop to southwards what I made sure was the travelling carriage of a
wealthy noble. I conjectured that it had inside of it the ransomable