h his legs drawn up, his arms
folded across his knees and his forehead resting upon them, sleeping
serenely over the embers of a burnt-out fire. He was still "making
music," but of a kind which needed no assistance from a mouth
harmonica to produce it.

They awoke him and told him of the sudden change in the programme
and of the need for haste in carrying it out.

"Oh, so help me! Them Apaches, eh? And that foreign josser, Count
What's-his-name, too?" said he, rubbing his eyes and blinking
sleepily. "Right you are, guv'ner! Gimme two seconds to get the
cobwebs out of my thinking-box and I'm ready to face marching orders
as soon as you like. My hat! though, but this is a startler. I
can understand wot them Apache johnnies has got against you, sir,
of course; but wot that Mauravanian biscuit is getting after you
for beats me. Wot did you ever do to the blighter, guv'ner? Trip
him up in some little bit of crooked business, sir, and 'did him
down,' as the 'Mericans say?"

"Something like that," returned Cleek. "Don't waste time in talking.
Simply get together such things as we shall need and let us be off
about our business as soon as possible."

Dollops obeyed instructions upon both points--obeyed them, indeed,
with such alacrity that he shut up like an oyster forthwith, dived
into the caravan and bounced out again, and within five minutes
of the time he had been told of the necessity for starting, had
started, and was forging away with the others over the dark, still
moor and facing cheerily the prospect of a thirty-mile walk to
Cumberlandshire.

All through the night they pressed onward thus--the two men walking
shoulder to shoulder and the boy at their heels--over vast stretches
of moorland where bracken and grass hung heavy and glittering
under their weight of dew; down the craggy sides of steep gullies
where the spring freshets had quickened mere trickles into noisy
water-splashes that spewed over the rocks, to fall into chuckling,
froth-filled pools below; along twisting paths; through the dark,
still woodland stretches, and thence out upon the wild, wet moor
again, with the wind in their faces and the sky all a-prickle
with steadily dimming stars. And by and by the mist-wrapped moon
dropped down out of sight, the worn-out night dwindled and died,
and steadily brightening Glory went blushing up the east to flower
the pathway for the footfalls of the Morning.

But as yet the farthermost outposts of Cumberland