d ceased suddenly.

I wanted--wanted desperately--to break down and run after him.
By a bodily effort--something like a long pull on a rope--I held
myself steady and braced my back against the bole of the ilex tree,
which I had chosen because it gave a view through the gateway towards
the forest. Upon this opening and the glade beyond it I kept my
eyes, for the first minute or two scarcely venturing to wink, only
relaxing the strain now and again for a cautious glance to right and
left around the deserted enclosure. I could hear my heart working
like a pump.

The enclosure--indeed the whole valley--lay deadly silent in the
growing heat of the morning. On the hidden summit behind the wood a
raven croaked; and as the sun mounted, a pair of buzzards, winging
their way to the mountains, crossed its glare and let fall a
momentary trace of shadow that touched my nerves as with a whip.
But few birds haunt the Corsican bush, and to-day even these woods
and this watered valley were dumb of song. No breeze sent a shiver
through the grey ilexes or the still paler olives in the orchard to
my right. On the slope the chestnut trees massed their foliage in
heavy plumes of green, plume upon plume, wave upon wave, a still
cascade of verdure held between jagged ridges of granite. Here and
there the granite pushed a bare pinnacle above the trees, and over
these pinnacles the air swam and quivered.

The minutes dragged by. A caterpillar let itself down by a thread
from the end of the bough under which I sat, in a direct line between
me and the gateway. Very slowly, while I watched him, he descended
for a couple of feet, swayed a little and hung still, as if
irresolute. A butterfly, after hovering for a while over the wall's
dry coping, left it and fluttered aimlessly across the garth,
vanishing at length into the open doorway of the church.

The church stood about thirty paces from my tree, and by turning my
head to the angle of my right shoulder I looked straight into its
porch. It struck me that from the shadow within it, or from one of
the narrow windows, a marksman could make an easy target of me.
The building had been empty over-night: no one (it was reasonable to
suppose) had entered the enclosure during Billy's sentry-go; no one
for a certainty had entered it since. Nevertheless, the fancy that
eyes might be watching me from within the church began now to worry,
and within five minutes had almost worried me into leav