the track, I was walking my fastest. Talaiti de Talt was
somewhere close ahead, and the knowledge made me tingle from ear to
toe. Forced stoicism wouldn't act.

At last, getting on a rise of the road where I could see over the
winding walls ahead, I made out a Talayot sprouting gray from amid its
green jacketing, barely half a kilometre away; and from the description
given at Mahon, that must be the very one I had worked so hard to
reach.

The limit of self-containment was passed. Excitement bubbled over. I
picked up my feet and ran for all I was worth.

Just past the bottom of the slope was a small farmhouse, lying a little
way back from the road. The Talayot was close beyond. A thought struck
me, and I pulled up, panting and, in spite of myself, laughing. A new
complication seemed to crop up. From the moment of reading old Lully's
journal in the Genovese _caffe_, it had never occurred to me till
then that the Talayot belonged less to me than to anybody else. Now,
seeing the whitewashed farm buildings close beside this old pyramid I
had come to loot, the idea that the modern owner might raise objections
came upon me in a flash; and although the matter was serious enough, as
Heaven knows, still its grimly humorous side cropped uppermost, and for
the life of me I could not help being tickled.

Of course any one will see that I might have waited till dark, and have
done my searching when all the world of provincial Minorca was snugly
slumbering. But that idea did not occur to me then, and if it had done,
I should not have listened to it. I was far too keen on going ahead
without further stoppages. The grasping fingers of Weems loomed always
in the near distance.

If I had only possessed a spare dollar or two, the thing would have
been simple; but not owning a peseta, I had tremors. Still there was no
help for it, and so following the _en avant_ principle, I swung
the gate, and walked up between the orange-bushes to the little
farmhouse. Two dogs sprang out from somewhere, barking furiously; but I
like dogs, and never feared one yet, and that pair were soon reduced to
oppressive civility. A small girl appeared, drawn by the uproar; but
the sight of a stranger made her bolt mutely within doors. And then a
woman came--a fat, tall, slatternly woman, whose husband was dead (she
said), and who owned the farm which circled Talaiti de Talt.

She was garrulous to a degree, and her voice--as is usual with the
voices of cats