listening in perspiration and a set look of determination in his
features, was clambering up and sliding down with unwonted agility, but
with a piteous look in his eyes which told how painfully he felt the
position in which they were placed.

No one spoke, every effort being needed for the toilsome task, as they
clambered along, now down in narrow rifts, now dragging themselves
painfully over the rugged masses of rock which lay as they had fallen
from the side of the defile, a couple of thousand feet above them. The
scene would have appeared magnificent at another time; the colours of
the rocks, the tufts of verdant bushes, the gloriously-mossed stones,
the patches of white hail, and the glancing, rushing, and gleaming
torrent, which was here deep and dark, there one sheet of white
effervescing foam. But the hearts of all were too full, and their
imaginations were painting the spectacle upon which they soon expected
to gaze, namely, the terribly mutilated body of poor Lawrence, battered
by his fall out of recognition.

One moment Mr Preston was asking himself how he could make arrangements
for taking the remains of the poor lad home. At another he was thinking
that it would be impossible, and that he must leave him sleeping in this
far-off land. While, again, the course of his thoughts changed, and he
found himself believing that poor Lawrence would have fallen and rolled
on, and then, in company with the avalanche of loose stones set in
motion by his horse's hoof's, have been plunged into the furious
torrent, and been borne away never to be seen again.

A curious dimness came over the professor's eyes, as he paused for a
moment or two upon the top of a rock, to gaze before him. But there was
nothing visible, for the defile at the bottom curved and zigzagged so
that they could not see thirty yards before them, and where it was most
straight the abundant foliage of the trees growing out of the cliffs
rendered seeing difficult.

"It must have been somewhere here, effendi," said Yussuf at last,
pausing for the others to overtake him, and pointing upwards. "Let us
separate now, and search about. You, Mr Burne, keep close down by the
river; you, Mr Preston, go forward here; and I will climb up--it is
more difficult--and search there. I will shout if I have anything to
say."

The professor looked up to find that he was at the foot of a mass of
rock, high up on whose side there seemed to be a ledge, and then anoth