I had gathered from the talk of the women that we were to lie there, guarding the pass, and keeping out of River Ward. Mancha was occupying that section now, hoping not to excite the Far-Folk by too active pursuit. It was not known yet if the lifters of the Treasure had passed beyond River Ward or if Ravenutzi had joined them, if indeed he might not yet be on our side the Ledge with the Ward. There were some other points in this connection on which I wished to satisfy myself. So when I saw Lianth mousing along under the wall, I crept after him, unsuspected. We came into a little bay of bitten scrub and a well-trodden track that led up along the stony, broken back of the Ledge. This way the bucks had gone when at the end of the mating season they ranged afar and fed on the high ridges. This way they came down to seek the does, and along this trail I saw Lianth pawing breathlessly, nose to the thick mosses like a snuffling hound. “They must have come this way,” he said. “Yes,” I assented, thinking of the deer. “If they have crossed, there should be some trace of them. They must have come in the night and could not have gone so carefully.” He scrutinized little heaps of leaf litter in the crevices, and squinted along the ground. “And the trackers have not been here either. They cannot have crossed at all.” All at once I understood that he was talking about Ravenutzi and the Ward. “There is no other way,” he said, “no other way possible for—a girl.” “Lianth, where is Herman?” He left off pawing over the trail and walked on toward the rim of the Ledge. “Gone after her.” “Zirrilëe?” He nodded. “But why?” “Mancha sent him.” “Why should he take so much trouble? She went where she chose. You heard what the keeper said?” “Ah!” he cried woundedly, “you women are all against her!” We had reached the top of the Ledge overlooking the Far-Folk country. It was all rounded, grassy hills, stony, full of shallow hollows, with occasional depressed trees, lying in the thin, airy shadows that fall so singularly in high places. It was very still, two or three crows flying over, and far up under the blue a buzzard sailing. “It’s no use looking out for them,” objected Lianth. “They’ll not show themselves while we are here.” “Do you think they know?” “Huh! Do rabbits know when coyotes hunt? If they know about the King’s Desire what wouldn’t they know?” He was sitting on a heap of stones picking the moss out of the crannies and pitching it down below. His throat and chin were strained and tight as though no songs could come that way again. “When I think of her hands,” he said, “and the parting of her hair, as white as a dove’s egg ... if she loved anybody she wouldn’t have thought of anything else.” “Evidently she didn’t,” I insisted cruelly. “But why do you care so much? Even if she hadn’t run away with Ravenutzi it wouldn’t have been you she would have married, it would have been Mancha.”