g a brand entered the cave. The two fugitives held their
breath, and Nessus sat with an arrow in the string ready to shoot. The
brand, however, gave but a feeble light, and the native, picking up the
bodies of three of the young bears, which lay close to the entrance,
threw them over his shoulder, and crawled back out of the cave again. As
they heard his departing footsteps the fugitives drew a long breath of
relief.

Nessus rose and made his way cautiously out of the cave. He returned in
a minute.

"They have taken the rope with them," he said, "and it is well, for when
they have searched the valley tomorrow, were it hanging there, it might
occur to them that we have made our way up. Now that it is gone they can
never suspect that we have returned here."

"There is no chance of our being disturbed again tonight, Nessus. We can
sleep as securely as if were in our camp."

So saying, Malchus chose a comfortable place, and was soon asleep.

Nessus, however, did not lie down, but sat watching with unwearied eyes
the entrance to the cave. As soon as day had fairly broken, a chorus
of loud shouts and yells far down the ravine told that the search had
begun. For hours it continued. Every bush and boulder in the bottom was
searched by the natives.

Again and again they went up and down the gorge, convinced that the
fugitives must be hidden somewhere; for, as Nessus had anticipated, the
cliffs at the upper end were so precipitous that an escape there was
impossible, and the natives had kept so close a watch all night along
the slopes at the lower end, and at the mouth, that they felt sure that
their prey could not have escaped them unseen. And yet at last they were
forced to come to the confusion that in some inexplicable way this must
have been the case, for how else could they have escaped? The thought
that they had reascended by the rope before it was removed, and that
they were hidden in the cave at the time the bodies of the bear and its
cubs were carried away, never occurred to them.

All day they wandered about in the bottom of the ravine, searching every
possible place, and sometimes removing boulders with great labour, where
these were piled together in such a manner that any one could be hidden
beneath them.

At nightfall they feasted upon the body of the bear first killed, which
had been found where it had fallen in the ravine. The body of one of the
young bears which lay far up the cave, had escaped their se