“However, I got to the top in the end, and crawled into a hollow and lay down behind some bushes, and panted as if my heart would break, and hoped I’d die and get over with it.  But nobody came to bother me, so I got up when the first streak of light showed in the sky—­there’d been a young cloud-burst just before that, and I was soaked to my skin—­and struck off across the cause for God-knew-where.  De Lorgnes and I had fixed that, if anything did happen to separate us, we’d each strike for Lyons and the one who got there first would wait for the other at the Hotel Terminus.  But before I could do that, I had to find a railroad, and I didn’t dare go Millau-way, I thought, because the chances were the gendarmes would be waiting there to nab the first bird that blew in all covered with mud and carrying a bag full of diamonds.

“I’d managed to hold onto the grip through it all, you see; but before that day was done I wished I’d lost it.  The damned thing got heavier and heavier till it must have weighed a gross ton.  It galled my hands and rubbed my legs till they were sore....  I was sore all over, anyway, inside and out....

“Sometime during the morning I climbed one of those bum mounds they call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink, preferably drink.  The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system.  I figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, and expected to arrive wherever I did arrive, if I ever arrived anywhere looking like an Early Egyptian prune....

“The view from the couronne didn’t show me anything I wanted to see, only a number of men in the distance, spread out over the face of the causse and quartering it like beagles.  I reckoned I knew what sort of game they were hunting, and slid down from that couronne and travelled.  But they’d seen me, and somebody sounded the view-halloo.  It was grand exercise for me and great sport for them.  When I couldn’t totter another yard I fell into a hole into the ground—­one of those avens—­and crawled into a sort of little cave, and lay there listening, to the suck and gurgle of millions of gallons of nice cool water running to waste under my feet, and me dying the death of a dog with thirst.

“After a while I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I crawled out, prepared to surrender, give up the plunder, and lick the boots of any man who’d slip me a cup of water.  But for some reason they’d given up the chase.  I saw no more of them, whoever they were.  And a little later I found a peasant’s hut, and watered myself till I swelled up like a poisoned pup.  They gave me a brush-down, there, and something to eat besides, and put me on my way to Millau.  It seemed that I was a hundred miles from anywhere else, so it was Millau for mine if it meant a life sentence in a French prison.

“I sneaked into the town after dark, and took the first train north.  Nobody took any notice of me.  I couldn’t see the use of going all round Robin Hood’s barn, as I’d have had to in order to make Lyons.  By the time I’d got there, de Lorgnes would have given up and gone on to Paris.”