na, and flung himself on the ground. He was now about fifty
yards from me, and I made shift to lessen the distance. There was a
grassy trench skirting the north side of the hill, deep and thickly
overgrown with heather. I wound my way along it till I was about twelve
yards from him, where I stuck, owing to the trench dying away. When I
peered out of the cover I saw that the other man had joined him and
that the idiots were engaged in embracing each other.

I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low voice I
could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one phrase, which
the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically. 'Tomorrow night,' he
said, and I noticed that his voice had not the Highland inflection
which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced at his watch, and then
the two began to move downhill towards the road I had travelled that
morning.

I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of which
sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the level of the
moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from the line the
pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently to watch their
movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so from the road,
when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them. On that lonely
highway travellers were about as rare as roadmenders, and what caught
their eye was a farmer's gig driven by a thick-set elderly man with a
woollen comforter round his neck.

I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson recognized Amos he
might take fright. Perhaps the driver of the gig thought the same, for
he appeared to be very drunk. He waved his whip, he jiggoted the reins,
and he made an effort to sing. He looked towards the figures on the
hillside, and cried out something. The gig narrowly missed the ditch,
and then to my relief the horse bolted. Swaying like a ship in a gale,
the whole outfit lurched out of sight round the corner of hill where
lay my cache. If Amos could stop the beast and deliver the goods there,
he had put up a masterly bit of buffoonery.

The two men laughed at the performance, and then they parted. Gresson
retraced his steps up the hill. The other man--I called him in my mind
the Portuguese Jew--started off at a great pace due west, across the
road, and over a big patch of bog towards the northern butt of the
Coolin. He had some errand, which Gresson knew about, and he was in a
hurry to perform it. It was