Not many days after the solstice therefore I set forth, accompanied only by Zulàr, on my proposed visit to the country house of my indicated host who received me with every sign of satisfaction and respect. I had paid several visits here in the past, so that my present resolution could not, and indeed did not, excite the smallest suspicion on the part of my enemies, who were in no wise disturbed by my departure from the palace. On the second evening of my visit I was talking to young Bávil, my entertainer's son and heir, a special favourite of mine, and in the course of our conversation I promised the lad a particular spear of my own invention. The boy's eyes eagerly glistened at the mention of this welcome gift, whereupon I summoned Zulàr and bade him hasten to the palace after his supper, fetch the required weapon, and return with it on the following morning. Having thus contrived to rid myself of Zulàr's presence on so simple an errand, I continued to sit with Lotta and his family during the sociable interval that in Meleager extends from supper till bedtime. Retiring to rest at an early hour I crept into my bed fully clothed, and waited anxiously thus until the last sound of wakefulness in the household had died away. When all was still, I rose cautiously from my couch, crossed the room on tiptoe and slipped through the open casement into the warm greyness of a summer's night without moonshine and without dew. Quietly I pursued the track leading through the gardens and farm of my host towards the lip of the ravine that separated his estate from the forbidden mountain. From previous hunting expeditions I was sufficiently familiar with this stony narrow pathway, and under this luminous crepuscule I experienced small difficulty in tracing its sinuous progress along the edge of the cliffs. An hour of slow steady walking thus at last brought me to the desired point, a spot where the private path merged into the road running from Tamarida to the viaduct. With eyes now grown fully accustomed to the gloaming I paused to scan the outline of the bridge. As I waited thus in a silence broken only by the ululation of wolves in the distant forests, I could clearly distinguish the soft padding of human feet at no great distance from where I stood. Very carefully I removed my buskins, which I hid in a neighbouring thicket, and thus relieved of my tell-tale foot-gear advanced in the direction of the sound. Peering ahead I soon obtained a better view of the bridge, as well as of the adjoining guard-house, whose façade displayed two squares of pale yellow light, from which I gathered that a guard of men-at-arms was stationed within its walls. Stealthily creeping forward, with body bent and with eyes fixed on the two warning patches of lanthorn light, I speedily espied the source of the faint tramping sound. A sentry, a diminutive but sturdy soldier, was dutifully patrolling the dusty space before the guard-house. Poor