hillside. I tried to see if my neighbour was making any signal, but
all was quiet. Presently the boat was hid from me by the bulge of
the hill, and I caught the sound of her scraping on the beach.

Gresson was not a hill-walker like my neighbour. It took him the
best part of an hour to get to the top, and he reached it at a point
not two yards from my hiding-place. I could hear by his labouring
breath that he was very blown. He walked straight over the crest
till he was out of sight of Ranna, and flung himself on the ground.
He was now about fifty yards from me, and I made shift to lessen
the distance. There was a grassy trench skirting the north side of
the hill, deep and thickly overgrown with heather. I wound my
way along it till I was about twelve yards from him, where I stuck,
owing to the trench dying away. When I peered out of the cover I
saw that the other man had joined him and that the idiots were
engaged in embracing each other.

I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low
voice I could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one
phrase, which the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically.
'Tomorrow night,' he said, and I noticed that his voice had not the
Highland inflection which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced
at his watch, and then the two began to move downhill towards the
road I had travelled that morning.

I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of
which sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the
level of the moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from
the line the pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently
to watch their movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so