fast to intercept this girl. He wore the distinctive
costume a British correspondent is apt to affect in the wilds.

They turned as Coburn came into view. The girl goggled at him. He was
not exactly the sort of third person one expected to find on a very
lonely, ill-defined rocky trail many miles north of Salonika.

When they turned to him, Coburn recognized the man. He'd met Dillon once
or twice in Salonika. He panted: "Dillon! There's a column of soldiers
headed across the border! Bulgarians!"

"How close?" asked Dillon.

"They're coming," said Coburn, with some difficulty due to lack of
breath. "I saw them across the valley. Everybody's run away from the
village. I was the last one out."

Dillon nodded composedly. He looked intently at Coburn. "You know me,"
he said reservedly. "Should I remember you?"

"I've met you once or twice," Coburn told him. "In Salonika."

"Oh," said Dillon. "Oh, yes. Sorry. I've got some cameras up yonder. I
want a picture or two of those Bulgarians. See if you can persuade this
young lady not to go on. I fancy it's safe enough here. Not a normal
raid route through this pass."

Coburn nodded. Dillon expected the raid, evidently. This sort of thing
had happened in Turkey. Now it would start up here, in Greece. The
soldiers would strike fast and far, at first. They wouldn't stop to hunt
down the local inhabitants. Not yet.

"We'll wait," said Coburn. "You'll be back?"

"Oh, surely!" said Dillon. "Five minutes or less."

He started up the precipitous wall, at whose bottom he had slid down. He
climbed remarkably well. He went up hand-over-hand despite the steepness
of the stone. It looked almost impossible, but Dillon apparently found
handgrips by instinct, as a good climber does. In a matter of minutes
he vanished, some fifty feet up, behind a bulging mass of stone. He did
not reappear.

* * * * *

Coburn began to get his breath back. The girl looked at him, her
forehead creased.

"Just to make sure," said Coburn, "I'll see if I can get a view back
down the trail."

Where the vastness of the sky showed, he might be able to look down. He
scrambled up a barrier two man-heights high. There was a screen of
straggly brush, with emptiness beyond. He peered.

He could see a long way down and behind, and actually the village was
clearly in sight from here. There were rumbling, caterpillar-tread tanks
in the act of entering it. There were anachronistic