fore him to the
goal. At last he was playing a true game of hazard, and the chance gave
him the keenest joy.

All the hot afternoon he scrambled till he came to the edge of a new
valley. Nazri must lie beyond, he reasoned, and he kept to the higher
ground. But soon he was mazed among precipitous shelves which needed
all his skill. He had to bring his long stride down to a very slow and
cautious pace, and, since he was too old a climber to venture rashly, he
must needs curb his impatience. He suffered the dull recoil of his
earlier vigour. While he was creeping on this accursed cliff the
minutes were passing, and every second lessening his chances. He was in
a fever of unrest, and only a happy fortune kept him from death. But at
length the place was passed, and the mountain shelved down to a plateau.
A wide view lay open to the eye, and Lewis blinked and hesitated. He
had thought Nazri lay below him, and lo! there was nothing but a tangle
of black watercourses.

The sun had begun to decline over the farther peak, and the man's heart
failed him utterly. These unkind stony hills had been his ruin. He was
lost in the most formidable country on God's earth, lost! when his
whole soul cried out for hurry. He could have wept with misery, and
with a drawn face he sat down and forced himself to think.

Suddenly a long, narrow black cleft in the farther tableland caught his
eye. He took the direction from the sun and looked again. This must be
the Nazri Pass, which he had never before that day heard of. He saw
where it ended in a stony valley. Once there he had but to follow the
nullah and cross the little ridge to come to Nazri.

Weariness was beginning to grow on him, but the next miles were the
quickest of the day. He seemed to have the foot of a chamois. Down the
rocky hillside, across the chaos of boulders, and up into the dark
nullah he ran like a maniac. His mouth was parched with thirst, and he
stopped for a moment in the valley bottom to swallow some rain-water.
At last he found himself in the Nazri valley, with the thin sword-cut
showing dark in the yellow evening. Another mile and he would be at the
camping-place, and in five more at the hut.

He kept high up on the ridge, for the light had almost gone and the
valley was perilous. It must be hideously late, eight o'clock or more,
he thought, and his despair made him hurry his very weary limbs.
Suddenly in the distant hollow he saw the gleam of a fire. He stopped
a