hed shield to the southward; and northward, peak
rose behind peak in everlasting grand perspective.

Near them was only the lonely slope, bare now, it seemed, of all life.
But they thought otherwise. Their unspeakably fierce gaze was focused
upon what looked like a grained slab, like any other grained slab, if it
had not all at once begun to twitch, and so--even then one could only
make out the faint outline of a body--turn gradually into a wild cat
asleep on his side. The twitching was not the result of a fit, but of
dreams. Probably he had not meant to go to sleep at all--in a land of
golden eagles! He had merely meant to bask in the sun, within instant
spring of a handy hole between the stones if anything in the enemy line
turned up. That very sun, however, had conspired with drowsiness to
betray him, and--something in the enemy line _had_ turned up.

Even so, I doubt if the golden eagles, with all their wonderful prismatic
binocular vision, made out the cat, as man could. Birds have not that
power, as man has. The twitching they were instant to see. The cause of
it they must have, equally instantly, suspected. Certainly, however, was
a long time coming to them. Precisely when it did, no man knoweth. They
remained like carvings or very fine figures cast in bronze, and as
immovable as the same, for the best part of an hour, if you please; and
during that time all the sign of life that either of them gave was to
wink a yellow eyelid, as quickly as an instantaneous shutter winks,
several times.

At the end of that period a rain-squall came racing and howling round the
summit. It passed in a few seconds, and left mist--cloud, if you
like--damp, dank, and chilly, and a dead calm, in its wake, and--the
Chieftain had vanished (I told you he knew the value of a hidden
descent). But goodness and his own arrogant self alone knew when or
where; in the squall, most likely. But he had certainly vanished.

The Chieftain's mate sat on, as stolid, and as solid, and as statuesque
as ever. She had not moved when he evaporated, or given any sign
whatever.

With the coming of the mist, the cat woke up. The cold probably awoke
him. He was not pleased. He had come to get warm, not cold. He arose
and stretched himself, baring all his claws and fangs with lazy
insolence, for any whom it might concern to see.

Then--he collapsed, falling as if the slab on which he stood had slidden
from under him, and remained--flatt