Then,
still on the ground, he scanned the endless yellow distance. Mountains,
serrated and cleft as in some giant's play, rose on every hand, while
through the hollows gleamed the farther snow-peaks. This little bare
plateau must be naked to any eye on any hill-side, and at the thought he
got to his feet and advanced.
At first sight the place had looked not a mile long, but before he got
to the farther slope he found that it was nearer two. The mountain air
had given him extraordinary lightness, and he ran the distance, finding
the hard, sandy soil like a track under his feet. The slope, when he
had reached it, proved to be abrupt and boulder-strewn, and the path had
an ugly trick of avoiding steepness by skirting horrible precipices.
Luckily the moon was bright, and the man was an old mountaineer;
otherwise he might have found a grave in the crevices which seamed the
hill.
He had not gone far when he began to realize that he was not the only
occupant of the mountain side. A whistle which was not a bird's seemed
to catch his ear at times, and once, as he shrank back into the lee of a
boulder, there was the sound of naked feet on the road before him. This
was news indeed, and he crept very cautiously up the rugged path. Once,
when in shelter, he looked out, and for a second, in a patch of
moonlight, he saw a man with the loose breeches and tightened girdle of
the hillmen.
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