There reigned in the woods that intense stillness which precedes dawn--an almost painful tension resembling apprehension. Always the first faint bird-note breaks it; then silence ends like a deep sigh exhaling and death seems very far away. Now above them the stars had grown very dim; and presently some faded out. And after a little while a small mountain bird twittered sleepily. Then unseen by them, the east glimmered like a sheet of tarnished silver. And out over the dark world of mountains, high above the solitude, rang the uncanny cry of an auerhahn. Again the big, unseen bird saluted the coming day. McKay stole forward drawing his pistol and the girl followed. The weird outcry of the auerhahn guided them, sounding from somewhere above among the black crests of the pines, nearer at hand, now, clearer, closer, more weird, until McKay halted peering upward, his pistol poised. As yet the crests of the pines were merely soft blots above. Yet as they stood straining their eyes upward, striving to discover the location of the great bird by its clamour, vaguely the branches began to take shape against the greying sky. Clearer, more distinct they grew until feathery masses of pine-needles stood clustered against the sky like the wondrous rendering in a Japanese print. And all the while, at intervals, the auerhahn's ghostly shrieking made a sinister tumult in the woods. Suddenly they saw him. Miss Erith touched McKay and pointed cautiously. There, on a partly naked tree-top, was a huge, crouching mass--an enormous bird, pumping its head at every uttered cry and spreading a big fan-like tail and beating the air with stiff-curved drooping wings. McKay whispered: "I'll try to shoot straight because you're hungry, Yellow-hair"; and all the while his pistol-arm slanted higher and higner. For a second, it remained motionless; then a red streak split the darkness and the pistol-shot crashed in her ears. There came another sound, too--a thunderous flapping and thrashing in the tree-top, the furious battering, falling tumult of broken branches and blindly beating wings, drumming convulsively in descent. Then came a thud; a feathery tattoo on the ground; silence in the woods. "And so you shall not go hungry, Yellow-hair," said McKay with his nice smile. They had done a good deal by the middle of the afternoon; they had broiled the big bird, dined luxuriously, had stored the remainder in their packs which they were preparing to carry with them into the forbidden forest of Les Errues. There was only one way and that lay over the white shoulder of Thusis--a cul-de-sac, according to all guide-books, and terminating in a rest-hut near a cave glistening with icy stalagmites called Thusis's Hair. Beyond this there was nothing--no path, no progress possible--only a depthless gulf unabridged and the world of mountains beyond.