ning to greet his nostrils. The
blood flowed more freely in his veins, and insensibly he squared his
shoulders to drink in the cold hill air. It was of the mountains and
yet strangely foreign, an air with something woody and alpine in the
heart of it, an air born of scrub and snow-clad rock, and not of his own
free spaces of heather. But it was hill-born, and this contented him;
it was night-born, and it refreshed him. In a little the road turned
down to the stream side, and he was on the edge of a long dark pool.

The river, which made a poor show in the broad channel at Bardur, was
now, in this straitened place, a full lipping torrent of clear, green
water. Lewis bathed his flushed face and drank, and it was as cold as
snow. It stung his face to burning, and as he walked the heartsome glow
of great physical content began to rise in his heart. He felt fit and
ready for any work. Life was quick in his sinews, his brain was a
weathercock, his strength was tireless. At last he had found a man's
life. He had never had a chance before. Life had been too easy and
sheltered; he had been coddled like a child; he had never roughed it
except for his own pleasure. Now he was outside this backbone of the
world with a task before him, and only his wits for his servant. Eton
and Oxford, Eton and Oxford--so it had been for generations--an
education sufficient to damn a race. Stocks was right, and he had all
along been wrong; but now he was in a fair way to taste the world's iron
and salt, and he exulted at the prospect.

It was hard walking in the nullah. In and out of great crevices the
road wound itself, on the brink of stupendous waterfalls, or in the
heart of a brushwood tangle. Soon a clear vault of sky replaced the
out-jutting crags, and he came out on a little plateau where a very cold
wind was blowing. The smell of snow was in the air, a raw smell like
salt when carried on a north wind over miles of granite crags. But on
the little tableland the moon was shining clearly. It was green with
small cloud-berries and dwarf juniper, and the rooty fragrance was for
all the world like an English bolt or a Highland pasture. Lewis flung
himself prone and buried his face among the small green leaves. Then,
still on the ground, he scanned the endless yellow distance. Mountains,
serrated and cleft as in some giant's play, rose on every hand, while
through the hollows gleamed the farther snow-peaks. This little bare
plateau must be naked