ext roof. Come!"

They clambered over a low parapet, and dropped six feet to another
level. Dawson helped the woman up the opposite wall, and she sat
reconnoitering on the top.

"Come quietly," she warned him, and he clambered up beside her and
looked down at the roof before them. In a kind of tent persons
appeared to be sleeping; their breath was plainly to be heard.

"You must walk like a rat," she whispered, smiling, and lowered
herself. He followed. She was crouching in the shadow of the wall,
and drew him down beside her. Somebody had ceased to sleep in the
tent, and was gabbling drowsily, in a monotonous sing-song.

"If they see us," she whispered to him, "they will think you have
come here after the women."

"But we could say----" he began.

"There will be nothing to say," she interrupted. "Hush! There he
comes."

Out of the tent crawled a man, lean and black and bearded, with a
sheet wrapped around him. He stood up and looked around, yawning. The
woman nestled closer to Dawson, who gripped instinctively on the
bronze image. The man walked to the parapet on their left and looked
over, and then walked back to the tent and stood irresolutely,
muttering to himself. Squatted under the wall, Dawson found room amid
the race of his disordered thoughts to wonder that he did not
instantly see them.

He was coming towards them, and Dawson felt the bare shoulder that
pressed against his arm shrug slightly. The man was ten paces away,
walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with
throbbing temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and
gripped him. He had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and
strangled the man's yell as it was conceived. They went down
together, writhing and clutching, Dawson uppermost, the man under him
scratching and slapping at him with open hands. He drew up a knee and
found a lean chest under it, drove it in, and choked his man to
silence and unconsciousness.

"Take this, take this," urged the woman, bending beside him. She
pressed her slender-bladed knife on him. "Just a prick, and he is
quite safe!"

Dawson rose. "No," he said. "He's still enough now. No need to kill
him." He looked at the body and from it to the woman. "Didn't I get
him to rights?" he asked exultantly.

She raised her face to his.

"It was splendid," she said. "With only the bare hands to take an
armed man----"

"Armed!" repeated Dawson.

"Surely," she answered. "That, at least, is