I knew that the man was plotting revenge; that he would not hesitate to plant his knife between my ribs should I give him the chance; and I could find only one alternative to remaining awake.

Had I been bloody-minded, I should have chosen it and solved the question at once and in my favour by shooting him as he sat.
But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my heart to do this.

The silence of the mountain and the sky-which seemed a thing apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be broken by it--awed me.

The vastness of the solitude in which we sat, the dark void above, through which the stars kept shooting, the black gulf below in which the unseen waters boiled and surged, the absence of other human company or other signs of human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I gave up the thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead, to watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean night.

Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze, and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking.