ly.

"I insist on your keeping with the others," repeated the half-breed,
more severely.

But she set her horse at a trot and caught up with Simon.

For more than an hour they followed a direction which Simon took to be
south by south-east, that is to say, the direction of France. The
half-breed thought the same:

"The main thing," he said, "is to get near the coast, as our beasts
have only enough food to last them till to-morrow evening. The water
question also might become troublesome."

"I don't care what happens to-morrow," Simon rejoined.

They made much slower progress than they had hoped to do. Their mounts
were poor, spiritless stuff. Moreover, they had to stop at intervals
to decipher the tracks which crossed one another in the wet sand or to
pick them up on rocky ground. Simon became incensed at each of these
halts.

All around them the scene was like that which they had observed early
in the afternoon; the land rose and fell in scarcely perceptible
undulations; it was a dismal, monotonous world, with its graveyards of
ships and skeleton steamers. Prowling figures crossed it in all
directions. Antonio shouted questions to them as he passed. One of
them said that he had met two horsemen and four pedestrians leading a
couple of horses on which were bound a man and a woman whose fair hair
swept the ground.

"How long ago was this?" asked Simon, in a hoarse voice.

"Forty minutes, or fifty at the most."

He dug his heels into his horse's flanks and set off at a gallop,
stooping over the animal's neck in order not to lose the scoundrel's
track. Antonio found it difficult to follow him, while Dolores erect
in her saddle, with a serious face and eyes fixed on the distant
horizon, kept up with him without an effort.

Meanwhile the light was failing, and the riders felt as though the
darkness were about to swoop down on them from the heavy clouds in
which it was gathering.

"We shall get there . . . we must," repeated Simon. "I feel certain we
shall see them in ten minutes. . . ."

He told Dolores in a few words what he had heard of Isabel's
abduction. The thought that she was in pain caused unendurable
torture. His overwrought mind pictured her a captive among savages
torturing her for their amusement, while her blood-bedabbled head was
gashed by the stones along the track. He followed in imagination all
the stages of her last agony; and he had such a keen impression of
speed contending with death, h