Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the heavens. I was as

certain as if I had been told that that aeroplane was looking for me, and that

it did not belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it from a pit of

heather. It flew low along the hill-tops, and then in narrow circles over the

valley up which I had come. Then it seemed to change its mind, rose to a great

height, and flew away back to the south.

 

I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began to think less well of

the countryside I had chosen for a refuge. These heather hills were no sort of

cover if my enemies were in the sky, and I must find a different kind of

sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction to the green country beyond the

ridge, for there I should find woods and stone houses.

 

About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white ribbon of road

which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields

gave place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a

kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over

a bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a young man.

 

He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes. In

his left hand was a small book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he

repeated—

 

As when a Gryphon through the wilderness With wingèd step, o’er hill and moory

dale Pursues the Arimaspian.