There was no path apparent, and the ascent was easiest up the bed of a wild gorge they presently discovered. As height after height was surmounted, the circle of their horizon widened: St. George and Pico were visible in the blue field of the ocean to the right, and over a wooded promontory the hazy outline of more distant Graciosa. Below lay Angra, and closer to the left the entrenched village of Nostre Dame de Loup. So long as the thickets abounded, there was no likelihood of the fugitives attracting attention from below, but when _el duro_ was gained, where the bare surface of rocks lay open to view from all sides, the adventurers turned back a space, and following a depression in the chain of mountain-tops, lost sight of the ocean, and overlooked instead numerous farms scattered through the little valleys of the highlands of Tercera. The Portuguese owners had gone off with their effects, but the grain left in the partially harvested fields supplied abundant rations. Here the deserters fixed their head-quarters while conducting their search for the count, returning nightly with the caution requisite where the sudden falling in with any party would have proved perilous. The military operations on the coast, however, kept the foreign powers occupied for the present, and no natives were to be met with, although several country-houses belonging to members of the viceroy’s court, were sacked by the outlaws of what few valuables remained. In the course of a week, it was evident Torrevedros was secreting himself in some other quarter, the semi-circle of mountains having been traversed in all directions and found to terminate in steep precipices looking inward, leaving the only points of egress opposite Angra. One morning Hilo and the captain resolved to descend far enough to turn the heel of the promontory and reascend on the farther side; a strong easterly wind lifted the fogs from the lowlands adjacent the sea, and enveloped the entire height of the mountain, for which reason, their knowledge of the geography of the country being very imperfect, the pair, before recognizing any landmarks, were close upon the road leading to the camp of the commander from the capital. Both caught the sound of hoofs instantly, and crouched in a thicket while a half-dozen troopers galloped by, headed by a knight with his visor up. “Santiago!” Hilo said, rising to his feet when the tramp had died away in the direction of the French camp. “We may spare ourselves the trouble of finding the count; nothing will save our heads where that man is.” “Who?” the captain asked. “Don Augustine Inique—may the devil confound him! I thought him safe in Spain with that whining daughter of his.” Wolfang’s face, not usually expressive, was a blank for some minutes, then slowly relaxed into a broad grin. The captain’s grin, as I have said elsewhere, boded no good.