was out of it--I bade him halt.

'Take off your belt,' I said curtly, 'and throw it down. But, mark me,
if you turn I fire.'

The spirit was quite gone out of him, and he obeyed mechanically. I
jumped down, still covering him with the gun, and picked up the belt,
pistols and all. Then I remounted, and we went on. By-and-by he asked me
sullenly what I was going to do.

'Go back,' I said, 'and take the road to Auch when I come to it.'

'It will be dark in an hour,' he answered sulkily.

'I know that,' I retorted. 'We must camp and do the best we can.'

And as I said, we did. The daylight held until we gained the skirts of
the pine-wood at the head of the pass. Here I chose a corner a little
off the track, and well sheltered from the wind, and bade him light a
fire. I tethered the horses near this and within sight. Then it remained
only to sup. I had a piece of bread: he had another and an onion. We ate
in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the fire.

But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I was
to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave's swart face and
sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and watchful. I knew
that the man was plotting revenge; that he would not hesitate to plant
his knife between my ribs should I give him the chance; and I could find
only one alternative to remaining awake. Had I been bloody-minded, I
should have chosen it and solved the question at once and in my favour
by shooting him as he sat.

But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my heart
to do this. The silence of the mountain and the sky-which seemed a thing
apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be broken by it--awed
me. The vastness of the solitude in which we sat, the dark void above,
through which the stars kept shooting, the black gulf below in which the
unseen waters boiled and surged, the absence of other human company or
other signs of human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I
gave up the thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead,
to watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean night. Presently
he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze, and then for a
couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It seemed years since
I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The old life, the old
employments--should I ever go back to them?--seemed dim and distant.
Would Cocheforet, the forest and the mountain, the grey Ch