the poor little beast was no less than distraught with
fright. What I had taken for grey streaks in his roan coat were in fact
lathery flakes of sweat, and he nuzzled towards me as a horse will rarely
nuzzle towards a stranger and only in extremest terror. A glance told me
that he had been galloping wildly and bucking to free himself of his
burden, but was now worn out and thoroughly cowed. His knees quivered as
I soothed and patted him; and when I pulled out a knife to cut the corpse
free from its lashings, he seemed to understand at once, and rubbed his
nose gratefully against my waistcoat.

A moment later the knife almost dropped from my hand at the sound of a
brisk hurrah from above, and looking up I saw the stalwart form of the
Irish corporal wriggling along the branch of a cork-oak which overhung the
slope. He carried his rifle, and, anchoring himself in a fork of the
boughs, stared down triumphantly.

"Arrah now," he hailed, "which of you's the man that came ashore at Porto
and passed through Evvisa overnight? Spake up quick now, and surrender,
for I have ye covered!"

He lifted his rifle. I cast my eye over the space of _macchia_ between
us, and decided that I had only his bullet to fear.

"_A poco, a poco_," I called back. "Be in no hurry--_piano_, my friend:
this gentleman has met with an accident to his stirrup!"

"The divvle take your impudence! Step forward this moment and surrender,
or it's meat I'll be making of the pair of you!"

And he meant it. I slipped behind the corpse, and hacked at its lashings
as his rifle roared out; and for aught I know the corpse received the
bullet. With a heave I toppled it and its ghastly frame together headlong
into the fern, sprang to the saddle in its place, pointed to it, and with
a shout of "Assassino! Assassino!" shook rein and galloped down the path.

A few strides removed me out of further danger from the corporal, perched
as he was in an attitude extremely inconvenient for reloading. Of his
comrade I saw no signs, but judged him to be foundered somewhere in the
_macchia_. The little roan had regained his wind. He took me down the
precipitous track without a blunder, picked his way across the dry bed of
a mountain torrent, and on the farther side struck off at right angles
into a path which mounted through the _macchia_ towards a wedge-shaped
cleft in the foothills to the north. Now and again this path returned to
the very lip of the torrent, a