struggled up this narrow rift before it became
less deep, and the light nearer. Then the climbing was less difficult,
and drier, and I could see that we were getting up more on to the open
mountain-side, amid the bare rocks and piled-up stones. All at once the
leader stopped short, and pointed up to where, quite half a mile away, I
could see about a dozen sheep standing clearly defined against the sky,
their heads with the great curled horns plainly visible. Some were
feeding, but two stood above the rest as if on guard.

Mr Raydon nodded, and the man said--

"I lost sight of my sheep just below where you see those, sir, and I
think if we keep on along for a mile beyond we shall find the stream we
want running down into the other valley."

Mr Raydon stood shading his eyes for a few minutes.

"Yes," he said, at last. "You are quite right. I can see the mountain
I have been on before. Forward!"

The way was less arduous now, and the fresh breeze into which we had
climbed made it cooler; but still it was laborious enough to make me
pant as I followed right in Mr Raydon's steps. Before we had gone on
much further I saw the sheep take alarm, and go bounding up, diagonally,
what looked like a vast wall of rock, and disappear; and when we had
climbed just below where I had seen them bound, it seemed impossible
that they could have found footing there.

Another half-hour's toilsome ascent, for the most part among loose
stones, and we stood gazing down into a narrow gully similar to that up
which we had climbed, and at the bottom I saw a little rushing stream,
which Mr Raydon said was the one we sought, and I knew that we had but
to follow that to where it joined the big river, after a journey through
the dense mass of forest with which the valley was filled.

Here we halted for a few minutes in a stony solitude, where there was
not the faintest sound to be heard; and then Mr Raydon's deep voice
whispered "Forward!" and we began to descend cautiously, for the way
down to the stream was so perilous that it was only by using the
greatest care that we reached the bottom in safety, and began to follow
the torrent downward.

"No chance for them to escape by us this way," said Mr Raydon to me
with a grim smile, looking back as we descended the chasm in single
file, gradually going as it were into twilight, and then almost into
darkness, with perpendicular walls of rock on either hand, and the moist
air filled with the