Mrs. Sladen and Mark Jervis, who were behind, descending the same zigzag path, happened to be immediately above the pair. Sounds ascend, and they were at the moment silent, when suddenly, through the leaves, and the cool evening air, a voice seemed wafted to their feet, which said-- “_I have been too sudden. If I were to wait a week or two. Let me talk to your aunt._” Mrs. Sladen and her companion looked straight at one another, and became guiltily crimson. There was a moment’s pause, ere the man exclaimed-- “There is no use in our pretending we are _deaf_! We have just heard what was never meant for other ears, and I’m awfully sorry.” “So am I,” she answered; “sorry in one way, glad in another.” “I doubt if Mrs. Brande would share your joy,” he retorted with a significant smile. “Of course we will keep it a dead secret.” “Of course”--emphatically. “On the whole,” with a short laugh, “I am not sure that it is not safer to _write_.” “Is this what you will do?” she inquired playfully. “I don’t know, but I certainly have had a lesson _not_ to try my fate coming home from a crowded picnic. What a dismal walk those two will have! Can you imagine a more unpleasant _tête-à-tête_? What _can_ they talk about now?” “Their walk, and every one’s, seems ended here,” remarked Mrs. Sladen, pointing to a crowd of coolies, dandies, men, ladies, and ponies who were all jammed together and making a great noise. “Of course, this is Toby Joy’s short cut, and most likely a practical joke,” exclaimed Jervis. “I believe he was at the bottom of the lost lunch too.” The much-boasted short cut was likely to prove the proverbial “longest way round,” and now afforded a very disagreeable surprise to the company of merry pleasure-seekers. They had been descending a densely wooded shoulder of a hill, with the cheery confidence of ignorance, to where at one point an artificially banked-up and stone-faced road crossed a deep gorge. The path, owing to the action of the rain, had slipped down, and there was now but a precarious footing across the breach, barely wide enough for a single pony--and that a steady one. Above, towered the hill, almost sheer; below, lay the blue shale precipice, clothed in fir trees, bushes, and brambles. To a hill coolie, or a person with a good head, it was passable; at least twenty had gone over, including Mrs. Brande in her dandy, who waved her hand jauntily as she was carried across. She was a plucky woman, as far as precipices were concerned. Some who were nervous hesitated on the brink--they were torn between two conflicting emotions, hunger and fear; many were actually beginning to retrace their steps. Toby Joy, on his hard-mouthed yellow “tat,” was riding backwards and forwards over the chasm to demonstrate how easy it was, and bragging and joking and making himself so conspicuous that some of his misguided victims--including Colonel Sladen--would not have been at all sorry if he had vanished down the Khud.