Nellie, upon her part, could make nothing of it, nor had she any desire to do so. Suddenly, as they stood there, the hounds burst into view, in more or less full cry, according to their agility. Gliding, shuffling, sprawling, the thin white line made what haste it could toward the village of Andana, where lunch was waiting. No one cared very much about the hares; elderly ladies, repenting of their rashness, would have paid precious gold to have been carried to any destination; the girls desired only that the men should admire their dexterity; the men, that their tricks should not go unobserved by the girls. Here and there, a fine performer rejoiced in the magic of the exercise and swooped down the mountain-side with the dash of an eagle upon its prey. But dash—except as an expression of the language employed—was in the main lacking to the _cortège_, which moved as though in lingering agony. Bob hazarded the opinion that they had better go down immediately to the "bun-scrap" in the village, and reluctantly, with a last prolonged embrace which threatened the stability of the feminine superstructure, they turned and began to ski gently down through the wood. Hardly, however, had they made a start, when there came, not from below but from above, a loud and prolonged cry, which echoed in the very heights of the Zaat, and brought them to a stand in an instant. Someone had fallen, up yonder, from one of the dangerous precipices—there could not be a doubt of it! "It must have been that fellow who dodged the gendarme," said Bob, after a little interval of waiting. Nellie did not know what to make of it. The cry was not repeated, and the pines hid the truth from their view. Nevertheless both were a little awed, and it was impossible not to believe that something untoward had happened. "I wonder if we ought to go up?" Bob asked her. She replied, with a very white face, that it was not their business. "There are always plenty of people at Vermala, and I know some of ours have gone up to the Zaat to-day. We could do no good, Bob—I’m sure I would go, if I thought that we could—but is it our business, when there are so many others about?" "And the whole thing just spoof, perhaps. By George, though; if it were not!—if it were murder, Nellie?" "Murder?—you make me shudder. How can you be so horrid, Bob?" Bob hastened to protest that horrors were what most girls doted on; but he was obviously ill at ease, and neither said much while they went down through the wood. A little further on they disturbed, maladroitly, a pair of lovers, who started up in guilty fashion to reveal the red face of a certain Mr. Richard Fenton, and the tousled hair of that amiable and athletic nymph, Miss Marjory Rider. It was the merriest meeting in all the world, and Nellie’s "Oh!" when she espied her sister would have done credit to a lady of the theatre. "Oh, Margy, how can you look me in the face—?" "But we’re engaged, Nell—I’m going to marry Dick."