to any eye on any hill-side, and at the thought he
got to his feet and advanced.

At first sight the place had looked not a mile long, but before he got
to the farther slope he found that it was nearer two. The mountain air
had given him extraordinary lightness, and he ran the distance, finding
the hard, sandy soil like a track under his feet. The slope, when he
had reached it, proved to be abrupt and boulder-strewn, and the path had
an ugly trick of avoiding steepness by skirting horrible precipices.
Luckily the moon was bright, and the man was an old mountaineer;
otherwise he might have found a grave in the crevices which seamed the
hill.

He had not gone far when he began to realize that he was not the only
occupant of the mountain side. A whistle which was not a bird's seemed
to catch his ear at times, and once, as he shrank back into the lee of a
boulder, there was the sound of naked feet on the road before him. This
was news indeed, and he crept very cautiously up the rugged path. Once,
when in shelter, he looked out, and for a second, in a patch of
moonlight, he saw a man with the loose breeches and tightened girdle of
the hillmen. He was running swiftly as if to some arranged place of
meeting.

The sight put all doubts out of his head. An attack on Forza was
imminent, and this was the side from which least danger would be
expected. If the enemy got there before him they would find an easy
entrance. The thought made him quicken his pace. These scattered
tribesmen must meet before they attacked, and there might still be time
for him to get in front. His ears were sharp as a deer's to the
slightest sound. A great joy in the game possessed him. When he
crouched in the shelter of a granite boulder or sprawled among the scrub
while the light footsteps of a tribesman passed on the road he felt that
one point was scored to him in a game in which he had no advantages. He
blessed his senses trained by years of sport to a keenness beyond a
townsman's; his eye, which could see distances clear even in the misty
moonlight; his ear, which could judge the proximity of sounds with a
nice exactness. Twice he was on the brink of discovery. A twig snapped
as he lay in cover, and he heard footsteps pause, and he knew that a
pair of very keen eyes were scanning the brushwood. He blessed his
lucky choice in clothes which had made him bring a suit so near the hue
of his hiding-place. Then he felt that the eyes were averted, the
foo