ossessed that nervous desire to be doing. Something of the
significance of the journey was theirs, and their nerves were braced
with the temper of fine steel.

He steadied them down with the patience of a devoted father for a pack
of boisterous children. No harsh words disturbed their sensitive ears.
The certainty of their obedience made it unnecessary to exert any
display of violence. They promptly fell again into their racing trot,
and the cart once more ran smoothly over the hard beaten trail.

The higher reaches of the creek cut into the valley from the right,
and the trail deviated to a rise of sandy ground. He had reached the
point of his meeting with Scipio. Nor did he slacken his pace over the
dust-laden patch. It was passed in a choking cloud, and in a moment
the rise was topped and a wild, broken country spread out before him.

Five miles farther on he halted beside a small mountain stream and
breathed his horses.

But his halt was of the briefest. He simply let the horses stand in
their harness. It was not time to feed, but he removed their bits and
let them nip up the bunches of sweet grass about their feet. And as he
did so he paused a moment at the head of each animal, muttering words
of encouragement, and administering caresses with a hand which bore in
its touch an affection that no words of his could have conveyed.

Then he went back to the cart and made a few simple dispositions. One
was to securely lash the gold-chest in its place; but its place he
changed to the front of the cart. Another was to leave the lid of the
foot-box, built against the dashboard, wide open, and to so secure it
that it could not close again. Another was to adjust the lowered hood
of the cart in a certain way that it was raised head-high as he sat in
his driving-seat.

Then, with a grim satisfaction in his small eyes as he glanced over
his simple preparations, he jumped to the ground and replaced the bits
in his horses' mouths. In two minutes he was again rushing over the
trail, but this time through a world of crag and forest as primitive
and rugged as was his own savage soul.

So the journey went on, over mountainous hills, and deep down into
valleys as dark as only mountain forests of spruce and pine could make
them. Over a broken road that set the light cart perilously bumping,
speeding along the edges of precipices, with little more than inches
to spare, at a pace that might well set the nerves jangling with every