At this point the diligence course to Ciudadella branches off to the northward, turning again after a while due west on to General Stanhope's road. But that was nothing to me then. Turning my back upon it, I took another path, in woeful disrepair, which led me down by many windings between high stone walls and straggling clumps of prickly pear. There were few houses to stop the view--only some two or three farm buildings. Cottages can scarcely be said to exist. The labourer either lives in the towns, or else he lodges under his master's roof. But the high walls and the hummocks shut one in, and I was perpetually having to climb one or the other to make sure of my whereabouts, for my sailing directions to the Talayot had been rather vague ones. The air was still and close, and already the sun had crept high and was burning fiercely. It was blazing hot, but in spite of that, and the ruggedness of the track, I was walking my fastest. Talaiti de Talt was somewhere close ahead, and the knowledge made me tingle from ear to toe. Forced stoicism wouldn't act. At last, getting on a rise of the road where I could see over the winding walls ahead, I made out a Talayot sprouting gray from amid its green jacketing, barely half a kilometre away; and from the description given at Mahon, that must be the very one I had worked so hard to reach. The limit of self-containment was passed. Excitement bubbled over. I picked up my feet and ran for all I was worth. Just past the bottom of the slope was a small farmhouse, lying a little way back from the road. The Talayot was close beyond. A thought struck me, and I pulled up, panting and, in spite of myself, laughing. A new complication seemed to crop up. From the moment of reading old Lully's journal in the Genovese _caffe_, it had never occurred to me till then that the Talayot belonged less to me than to anybody else. Now, seeing the whitewashed farm buildings close beside this old pyramid I had come to loot, the idea that the modern owner might raise objections came upon me in a flash; and although the matter was serious enough, as Heaven knows, still its grimly humorous side cropped uppermost, and for the life of me I could not help being tickled. Of course any one will see that I might have waited till dark, and have done my searching when all the world of provincial Minorca was snugly slumbering. But that idea did not occur to me then, and if it had done, I should not have listened to it. I was far too keen on going ahead without further stoppages. The grasping fingers of Weems loomed always in the near distance.