The girl sat up in her torn blanket and met his gaze very calmly. What he had just said to her meant the beginning of the end. She understood perfectly. But her voice was sweet and undisturbed as she answered him, and they quietly discussed the chances of discovering water in some sunken hole among the outer ledges and bowlders whither they were being slowly and hopelessly forced. Noon found them still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water; but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture--a crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was slowly creeping--a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into the slime again, leaving a trail of iridescent moisture where its sagging belly dragged. In a grove of saplings there were a few ferns; and here McKay dug with his trench knife; but the soil proved to be very shallow; everywhere rock lay close to the surface; there was no water there under the black mould. To and fro they roamed, doggedly seeking for some sign of water. And the woods seemed damp, too; and there were long reaches of dewy ferns. But wherever McKay dug, his knife soon touched the solid rock below. And they wandered on. In the afternoon, resting in the shade, he noticed her lips were bleeding--and turned away, sharply, unable to endure her torture. She seemed to understand his abrupt movement, for she leaned slightly against him where he sat amid the ferns with his back to a tree--as a dog leans when his master is troubled. "I think," she said with an effort, "we should release our pigeon now. It seems to be very weak." He nodded. The bird appeared languid; hunger and thirst were now telling fast on the little feathered messenger. Evelyn shook out the last dusty traces of corn; McKay removed the bands. But the bird merely pecked at the food once or twice and then settled down with beak gaping and the film stealing over its eyes. McKay wrote on tissue the date and time of day; and a word more to say that they had, now, scarcely any chance. He added, however, that others ought to try because there was no longer any doubt in his mind that the Boche were still occupied with some gigantic work along the Swiss border in the neighbourhood of Mount Terrible; and that the Swiss Government, if not abetting, at least was cognizant of the Hun activities. This message he rolled into a quill, fastened it, took the bird, and tossed it westward into the air. The pigeon beat the morning breeze feebly for a moment, then fluttered down to the top of a rock. For five minutes that seemed five years they looked at the bird, which had settled down in the sun, its bright eyes alternately dimmed by the film or slowly clearing.