red, very politely, to share his blanket with Stephanu, but
Stephanu declined. Those two might share one loyalty and together
take counsel for it, but between them as men there could be no liking
nor acceptance of favours.

I lay listening for a while to the mutter of their voices as they
talked there together under the olives; but not for long. The few
words and exclamations that reached me carried no meaning. In truth
I was worn out. Very soon the chatter of the stream, deep among the
trees--the stream which we had just now avoided--confused itself with
their talk, and I slept.

Of a sudden I started and sat up erect. I had been dreaming, and in
my dream I had seen two figures pass along the road beyond the fringe
of the trees. They had passed warily, yet hurriedly, across the
patch of it now showing white between the olive trunks, under the
risen moon. Yet how could this have happened if I had dreamed it
merely? The moon, when I fell asleep, had not surmounted the ridge
behind me, and that patch of road, now showing so white and clear,
had been dim, if not quite invisible. None the less I could be sworn
that two figures had passed up the road . . . two men . . .

Marc'antonio and Stephanu?--reconnoitring perhaps? I rubbed my eyes.
No: Marc'antonio and Stephanu lay a few paces away, stretched in
profound sleep under the moonlight drifting between the olive boughs;
and yonder, past the fringe of the orchard, shone the patch of white
high road. Two figures, half a minute since, had passed along it.
I could be sworn to it, even while reason insisted that I had been
dreaming.

I flung off my rug, and, stepping softly to the verge of the
orchard's shadow, peered out upon the road. To my right--that is to
say, northward--it stretched away level and visibly deserted so far
as the bend, little more than a gunshot distant, where it curved
around the base of low cliff and disappeared. A few paces on this
side of the cliff glimmered the rail of a footbridge, and to this
spot my ears traced the sound of running water which had been singing
through my dreams--the same stream which had turned us aside to seek
our bivouac. Not even yet could I believe that my two wayfarers had
been phantoms merely. I had given them two minutes' start at least,
and by this time they might easily have passed the bend.
Threading my way swiftly between the boles of the olive trees, I
skirted the road to the edge of the stream and s