clearly my job to get after him.

I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moorland miles like a
deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled on his trail. I had to keep
well behind, and as much as possible in cover, in case he looked back;
and that meant that when he had passed over a ridge I had to double not
to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in an open place I had
to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We struck a road which crossed a
low pass and skirted the flank of the mountains, and this we followed
till we were on the western side and within sight of the sea. It was
gorgeous weather, and out on the blue water I saw cool sails moving and
little breezes ruffling the calm, while I was glowing like a furnace.
Happily I was in fair training, and I needed it. The Portuguese Jew
must have done a steady six miles an hour over abominable country.

About five o'clock we came to a point where I dared not follow. The
road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that several miles of it were
visible. Moreover, the man had begun to look round every few minutes.
He was getting near something and wanted to be sure that no one was in
his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took to the
hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade of screes and
tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise which seemed to mark the rim
of a little bay into which descended one of the big corries of the
mountains. It must have been a good half-hour later before I, at my
greater altitude and with far worse going, reached the same rim. I
looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.

He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider than I had
thought. A ring of black precipices came down to within half a mile of
the shore, and between them was a big stream--long, shallow pools at
the sea end and a chain of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth like
a badger somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be watching
me from behind a boulder.

But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the stream, his face
set on the road we had come. Whatever his errand was he had finished
it, and was posting back to his master. For a moment I thought I should
follow him, but another instinct prevailed. He had not come to this
wild place for the scenery. Somewhere down in the glen there was
something or somebody that held the key of the mystery. It was my
business to stay there till I had unlocked it. Besides, in two h