With these directions, the three horsemen started off, keeping to the hills, where their vision could sweep the valleys and lowlands with so much accuracy that it would have been impossible for an enemy to come at any time within a couple of miles of steep climbing without being perceived. A little more than an hour's ride brought them to the point from whence they must strike the forest and lowlands. They paused for a minute or two, calmly surveying the hillsides, and minutely scrutinising every object which had any indefiniteness or uncertainty about it. But the curlews swept the long circle of the hills, uttering their plaintive cries, and the hawks glided over the tops of the trees, or darted in and out amongst them to start their prey into the open, or, on poised wing, they rested motionless in the air, scanning with keen vision the ground beneath them, and ready to pounce like a flash upon any luckless mouse or tiny rabbit that had ventured on an excursion from its hole. "The presence of man--or, at least, of men--is not here," said Oswald, "or these shy denizens of the solitudes of Nature would betray it by their unrest. Lead on, Badger; we shall not be molested, I trust." So Badger struck out for the lowlands at a rapid pace, presently plunging into the head of the wood which ran up the valley some half-mile beyond the unbroken forest. In the bottom of this valley or gorge, a water-course was speeding away from the hills, occasionally leaping over falls of several yards. But, amongst the unsolvable mysteries of Nature, trout in goodly numbers had penetrated beyond them, and in every pool or temporary resting-place of the waters, these enterprising denizens of the flood abounded. The three followed a rough path by this water-course for a considerable distance, until it merged in the well-nigh interminable forest.