mountain paths, I understood that a time was coming when I was to need
all my courage and resource. My enemy was carried upon the shoulders of
two men behind me, and I could hear his hissing and his reviling, first
in one ear and then in the other, as I was hurried up the winding track.

I suppose that it must have been for an hour that we ascended, and what
with my wounded ankle and the pain from my eye, and the fear lest this
wound should have spoiled my appearance, I have made no journey to which
I look back with less pleasure. I have never been a good climber at any
time, but it is astonishing what you can do, even with a stiff ankle,
when you have a copper-coloured brigand at each elbow and a nine-inch
blade within touch of your whiskers.

We came at last to a place where the path wound over a ridge, and
descended upon the other side through thick pine-trees into a valley
which opened to the south. In time of peace I had little doubt that the
villains were all smugglers, and that these were the secret paths by
which they crossed the Portuguese frontier. There were many mule-tracks,
and once I was surprised to see the marks of a large horse where a
stream had softened the track. These were explained when, on reaching a
place where there was a clearing in the fir wood, I saw the animal
itself haltered to a fallen tree. My eyes had hardly rested upon it,
when I recognized the great black limbs and the white near fore-leg. It
was the very horse which I had begged for in the morning.

What, then, had become of Commissariat Vidal? Was it possible that
there was another Frenchman in as perilous a plight as myself? The
thought had hardly entered my head when our party stopped and one of
them uttered a peculiar cry. It was answered from among the brambles
which lined the base of a cliff at one side of a clearing, and an