he house, merely led him to a spot
where the view was clear, and then let him gaze for a few minutes as the
great orange globe rolled up and gilded the mists that lay in the
hollows among the hills. Then he returned to the house and prepared the
scanty breakfast, of which they partook before going off in search of
the missing baggage-horses and their load.

Three hours were consumed in seeking out the spot where the man who had
charge of the two animals had gone from his right path. It was very
natural for him to have done so, for the road forked here, and he
pursued that which seemed the most beaten way. Down here he had
journeyed for hours, and when at last he had come to the conclusion that
he had gone wrong, instead of turning back he had calmly accepted his
fate, unloaded the animals, made himself a fire out of the abundant wood
that lay around, and there he waited patiently until he was found.

It was a hindrance so soon after their starting; but Yussuf seemed to
set so good an example of patience and forbearance that the professor
followed it, and Mr Burne was compelled to accept the position.

"We shall have plenty of such drawbacks," Mr Preston said; "and we must
recollect that we are not in the land of time-tables and express
trains."

"We seem to be in the land of no tables at all, not even chairs,"
grumbled Mr Burne; "but there, I don't complain. Go on just as you
please. I'll keep all my complaints till I get back, and then put them
in a big book."

A week of steady slow travelling ensued, during which time they were
continually journeying in and out among the mountains, following rough
tracks, or roads as they were called, whose course had been suggested by
that of the streams that wandered between the hills. Often enough the
way was the dried-up bed of some torrent, amidst whose boulders the
patient little Turkish horses picked their way in the most sure-footed
manner.

It was along such a track as this that they were going in single file
one day, for some particular reason that was apparently known only to
the professor and Yussuf. They seemed to be deep down in the earth, for
the rift along which they travelled was not above twenty feet wide, and
on the one side the rock rose up nearly three thousand feet almost
perpendicularly, while, on the other, where it was not perpendicular, it
appeared to overhang.

Now and then it opened out a little more. Then it contracted, and
seemed as if er