and tumbling off his horse, more like a
beast than a man threw himself bodily on the precious morsel.

The innkeeper was not far behind him. An instant and he was down, too,
peering at the thing; and for an instant I thought that they would fight
over it. However, though their jealousy was evident, their excitement
cooled a little when they discovered that the scrap of stuff was empty;
for, fortunately, the pebble had fallen out of it. Still, it threw them
into such a fever of eagerness as it was wonderful to witness. They
nosed the ground where it had lain, they plucked up the grass and turf,
and passed it through their fingers, they ran to and fro like dogs on a
trail; and, glancing askance at one another, came back always together
to the point of departure. Neither in his jealousy would suffer the
other to be there alone.

The shock-headed man and I sat our horses and looked on; he marvelling,
and I pretending to marvel. As the two searched up and down the path,
we moved a little out of it to give them space; and presently, when
all their heads were turned from me, I let a second morsel drop under a
gorse-bush. The shock-headed man, by-and-by, found this, and gave it to
Clon; and as from the circumstances of the first discovery no suspicion
attached to me, I ventured to find the third and last scrap myself. I
did not pick it up, but I called the innkeeper, and he pounced upon it
as I have seen a hawk pounce on a chicken.

They hunted for the fourth morsel, but, of course, in vain, and in the
end they desisted, and fitted the three they had together; but neither
would let his own portion out of his hands, and each looked at the other
across the spoil with eyes of suspicion. It was strange to see them in
that wide-stretching valley, whence grey boar-backs of hills swelled
up into the silence of the snow--it was strange, I say, in that vast
solitude, to see these two, mere dots on its bosom, circling round
one another in fierce forgetfulness of the outside world, glaring
and shifting their ground like cocks about to engage, and wholly
engrossed--by three scraps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty paces!

At last the innkeeper cried with an oath, 'I am going back. This must
be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you go on with
Antoine. It will be all right.'

But Clon, waving a scrap of the stuff in either hand, and thrusting his
ghastly mask into the other's face, shook his head in passionate denia