is...

But it was absurd to believe that persons fostering a design of such
nature would so deliberately and obviously advertise their purpose!

Cheerfully admitting that he was an imbecile to think of such a thing,
Duchemin set his mental alarm for six the following morning, rose at
that hour, and by eight had tramped the five miles between Nant and the
nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde; where he despatched a code
telegram to London, requesting any information it might have or be able
to obtain concerning Mr. Whitaker Monk of New York and the several
members of his party; the said information to be forwarded in code to
await the arrival of Andre Duchemin at the Hotel du Commerce, Millau.

And then, partly to kill time, partly to get himself in trim for
to-morrow's trip, which he meant to make strictly in character as the
pedestrian tourist, he walked round three sides of a square in
returning to Nant--by way, that is, of Sauclieres and the upper valley
of the Dourbie.

In the rich sunshine that fell from a cloudless sky--even the twin
peaks that stood sentinel over Nant had shamelessly put off their
yashmaks for the day--the rain-fresh world was sweet to see; and
Duchemin found himself consuming leagues with heels strangely light; or
he thought their lightness strange until he discovered the buoyance of
his heart, which wasn't strange at all. He knew too well the cause of
that; and had given over fretting about the inevitable. The sum of his
philosophy was now: _What must be, must_ .It would have been difficult
to be unhappy in the knowledge that one retained still the capacity to
love generously, honourably, expecting nothing, exacting nothing,
regretting nothing, not even in anticipation of the ultimate,
inevitable heartache.

Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon
his content. As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his
journey--Nant almost in sight--he heard a curious, intermittent rumble
on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its
cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great
boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night's deluge,
was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed
Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert.

Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent,
with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its
last resting place i