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 footsteps died away, and he was safe.  Again, as he turned a corner swiftly, he almost came on the back of a man who was stepping along leisurely before him.  For a second he stopped, and then he was back round the corner, and had swung himself up to a patch of shadow on the crag-side.  He looked down and saw his enemy clearly in the moonlight; a long, ferret-faced fellow, with a rifle hung on his back and an ugly crooked knife in his hand.  The man looked round, sniffing the air like a stag, and then, satisfied that there was nothing to fear, turned and went on.  Lewis, who had been sitting on a sharp jag of rock, swung an aching body to the ground and advanced circumspectly.