shop. I am inclined to think, indeed, that in that matter honour is
satisfied, and that, since Gip's name and address are known to them, I
may very well leave it to these people, whoever they may be, to send in
their bill in their own time.

3. THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS

Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the
torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The
difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked
the fugitives for so long, expanded to a broad slope, and with a common
impulse the three men left the trail, and rode to a little eminence set
with olive-dun trees, and there halted, the two others, as became them,
a little behind the man with the silver-studded bridle.

For a space they scanned the great expanse below them with eager eyes.
It spread remoter and remoter, with only a few clusters of sere thorn
bushes here and there, and the dim suggestions of some now waterless
ravine, to break its desolation of yellow grass. Its purple distances
melted at last into the bluish slopes of the further hills--hills it
might be of a greener kind--and above them invisibly supported, and
seeming indeed to hang in the blue, were the snowclad summits of
mountains that grew larger and bolder to the north-westward as the sides
of the valley drew together. And westward the valley opened until a
distant darkness under the sky told where the forests began. But the
three men looked neither east nor west, but only steadfastly across the
valley.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip was the first to speak. "Nowhere," he
said, with a sigh of disappointment in his voice. "But after all, they
had a full day's start."

"They don't know we are after them," said the little man on the white
horse.

"SHE would know," said the leader bitterly, as if speaking to himself.

"Even then they can't go fast. They've got no beast but the mule, and
all to-day the girl's foot has been bleeding---"

The man with the silver bridle flashed a quick intensity of rage on him.
"Do you think I haven't seen that?" he snarled.

"It helps, anyhow," whispered the little man to himself.

The gaunt man with the scarred lip stared impassively. "They can't be
over the valley," he said. "If we ride hard--"

He glanced at the white horse and paused.

"Curse all white horses!" said the man with the silver bridle, and
turned to scan the beast his curse included.

The little man looked down