ey with fright. Every once in a while somebody
or something would make a pass at me in the night, and I'd duck and
double and run another way.

"After a while I found myself climbing a steep, rocky slope, and
guessed it must be the cliff behind the chateau. It was a sort of
zig-zag path, which I couldn't see, only guess at. I was scared stiff;
but they were still after me, or I thought they were, so I floundered
on. The path, if it was a path, was slimy with mud, and about every
third step I'd slip and go sprawling. I can't tell you how many times I
felt my legs shoot out into nothing, and dug my fingers into the muck,
or broke my nails on rocks and caught clumps of grass with my teeth, to
keep from going over ... and all the while that all-gone feeling in the
pit of my stomach....

"However, I got to the top in the end, and crawled into a hollow and
lay down behind some bushes, and panted as if my heart would break, and
hoped I'd die and get over with it. But nobody came to bother me, so I
got up when the first streak of light showed in the sky--there'd been a
young cloud-burst just before that, and I was soaked to my skin--and
struck off across the cause for God-knew-where. De Lorgnes and I had
fixed that, if anything did happen to separate us, we'd each strike for
Lyons and the one who got there first would wait for the other at the
Hotel Terminus. But before I could do that, I had to find a railroad,
and I didn't dare go Millau-way, I thought, because the chances were
the gendarmes would be waiting there to nab the first bird that blew in
all covered with mud and carrying a bag full of diamonds.

"I'd managed to hold onto the grip through it all, you see; but before
that day was done I wished I'd lost it. The damned thing got heavier
and heavier till it must have weighed a gross ton. It galled my hands
and rubbed my legs till they were sore.... I was sore all over, anyway,
inside and out....

"Sometime during the morning I climbed one of those bum mounds they
call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink,
preferably drink. The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone
on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system. I
figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, and
expected to arrive wherever I did arrive, if I ever arrived anywhere
looking like an Early Egyptian prune....

"The view from the couronne didn't show me anything I wanted to