In the small hours of the morning, a party of half a dozen men on skis issued from the courtyard of the Brunvarad. They were weary-looking folk, dull-eyed and taciturn, and without a word they set themselves in motion along the road to Riefinsdorf. The remains of a huge bonfire glowed dully by the roadside, and a pillar of black smoke streamed straight up into the windless air. Where the snow had thawed in a circle round the once festive blaze it had frozen again into lumps of discoloured ice. Dark, recumbent forms showed here and there in the snow, heavy breathing wretches who had gone to sleep, warmed with abundant wine and the glowing flames, but who would wake in the morn to the misery of frost-bite and its attendant horrors. But the little group of ski-ers had no thought for such as these, and they passed them by with scarce a glance. Onward they went without a word, till Meyer tripped up over a sleeping form in the roadway, and broke the silence with a bitter curse, as he dragged himself to his feet. "Why don't you go home, Meyer?" suggested Saunders, "you are fagged out, and we may have to sprint later on." "If Bilderbaum can go on, I can go on," said the Commander-in-Chief irritably. "He is ten years older than I am." "Five," corrected the General snappishly. "The pursuit is farcical," said Meyer. "It would have been useless if we had undertaken it at once. At this hour it is a piece of ludicrous folly." "You need not come," snapped Saunders, who, like the others, seemed to be in the worst of humours. "Thanks," retorted Meyer. "We must play the game to its weary end. We have shown ourselves fools, and the least part of our penalty is a sleepless night after a restless day." "We may overtake them yet," said Captain Lexa, who, with two of his riflemen, made up the little party. "Impossibilities seem possibilities only to geniuses and fools," said Meyer rudely. "It is hardly necessary to state to which category we belong." "While there is life there is hope," maintained Lexa stubbornly. Meyer made an exclamation of contempt. "Supposing the miracle is realised," he said, "and the slower catches the swifter, even then they will certainly outwit us again. In the proverb the tortoise caught the hare--but then the tortoise had brains." Meyer's sarcasm had anything but a cheering effect on the dismal spirits of the company. "To think of our never recognising them!" said Saunders bitterly. "To think of Trafford fooling us----" "Oh, Trafford has imagination and initiative, in strong contradistinction to ourselves!" interrupted Meyer. "He has fooled us before and he would fool us again twenty times if twenty opportunities were offered him. We are not very clever people, my dear Saunders."