Gangnet glanced toward the foot of one of the trees.  He stooped and picked up two or three objects that resembled eggs.

“To eat?” asked Maskull, accepting the offered gift.

“Yes, eat them; you must be hungry.  I want none myself, and one mustn’t insult Krag by offering him a pleasure—­especially such a low pleasure.”

Maskull knocked the ends off two of the eggs, and swallowed the liquid contents.  They tasted rather alcoholic.  Krag snatched the remaining, egg out of his hand and flung it against a tree trunk, where it broke and stuck, a splash of slime.

“I don’t wait to be asked, Gangnet....  Say, is there a filthier sight than a smashed pleasure?”

Gangnet did not reply, but took Maskull’s arm.

After they had alternately walked through forests and descended cliffs and slopes for upward of two hours, the landscape altered.  A steep mountainside commenced and continued for at least a couple of miles, during which space the land must have dropped nearly four thousand feet, at a practically uniform gradient.  Maskull had seen nothing like this immense slide of country anywhere.  The hill slope carried an enormous forest on its back.  This forest, however, was different from those they had hitherto passed through.  The leaves of the trees were curled in sleep, but the boughs were so close and numerous that, but for the fact that they were translucent, the rays of the sun would have been completely intercepted.  As it was, the whole forest was flooded with light, and this light, being tinged with the colour of the branches, was a soft and lovely rose.  So gay, feminine, and dawnlike was the illumination, that Maskull’s spirits immediately started to rise, although he did not wish it.

He checked himself, sighed, and grew pensive.

“What a place for languishing eyes and necks of ivory, Maskull!” rasped Krag mockingly.  “Why isn’t Sullenbode here?”

Maskull gripped him roughly and flung him against the nearest tree.  Krag recovered himself, and burst into a roaring laugh, seeming not a whit discomposed.

“Still what I said—­was it true or untrue?”

Maskull gazed at him sternly.  “You seem to regard yourself as a necessary evil.  I’m under no obligation to go on with you any farther.  I think we had better part.”

Krag turned to Gangnet with an air of grotesque mock earnestness.

“What do you say—­do we part when Maskull pleases, or when I please?”

“Keep your temper, Maskull,” said Gangnet, showing Krag his back.  “I know the man better than you do.  Now that he has fastened onto you there’s only one way of making him lose his hold, by ignoring him.  Despise him—­say nothing to him, don’t answer his questions.  If you refuse to recognise his existence, he is as good as not here.”

“I’m beginning to be tired of it all,” said Maskull.  “It seems as if I shall add one more to my murders, before I have finished.”