When you spoke of being away a month you seemed to contemplate a possibility of being absent longer." Alton nodded.

"I did," he said.

"The man who found the silver is lying up there still, but I've provided for anything of that kind happening to me, as you will see in a day or two.

Now I don't think we need worry any more until we get to Carnaby." Deringham made a gesture of concurrence, but the grim irony of Alton's speech occurred to him as he went out to grapple with his torturing anxiety.

At first he could scarcely think of anything consecutively, and once more the picture of a man hanging by a juniper-bush with a river frothing down the gorge below rose up persistently before his memory.