eard a condemned man will count
the windows of the houses on his way to the scaffold.

Presently the litter was ready, and the men made signs to me to get
into it. They carried me down the ravine and up the Machudi burn to
the green walls at its head. I admired their bodily fitness, for they
bore me up those steep slopes with never a halt, zigzagging in the
proper style of mountain transport. In less than an hour we had topped
the ridge, and the plateau was before me.

It looked very homelike and gracious, rolling in gentle undulations to
the western horizon, with clumps of wood in its hollows. Far away I
saw smoke rising from what should be the village of the Iron Kranz. It
was the country of my own people, and my captors behoved to go
cautiously. They were old hands at veld-craft, and it was wonderful
the way in which they kept out of sight even on the bare ridges.
Arcoll could have taught them nothing in the art of scouting. At an
incredible pace they hurried me along, now in a meadow by a stream
side, now through a patch of forest, and now skirting a green shoulder
of hill.

Once they clapped down suddenly, and crawled into the lee of some thick
bracken. Then very quietly they tied my hands and feet, and, not
urgently, wound a dirty length of cotton over my mouth. Colin was
meantime held tight and muzzled with a kind of bag strapped over his
head. To get this over his snapping jaws took the whole strength of
the party. I guessed that we were nearing the highroad which runs from
the plateau down the Great Letaba valley to the mining township of
Wesselsburg, away out on the plain. The police patrols must be on this
road, and there was risk in crossing. Sure enough I seemed to catch a
jingle of bridles as if from some company of men riding in haste.

We lay still for a little till the scouts came back and reported the
coast clear. Then we made a dart for the road, crossed it, and got
into cover on the other side, where the ground sloped down to the
Letaba glen. I noticed in crossing that the dust of the highway was
thick with the marks of shod horses. I was very near and yet very far
from my own people.

Once in the rocky gorge of the Letaba we advanced with less care. We
scrambled up a steep side gorge and came on to the small plateau from
which the Cloud Mountains rise. After that I was so tired that I
drowsed away, heedless of the bumping of the litter. We went up and
up, and when I next ope