I lay listening for a while to the mutter of their voices as they talked there together under the olives; but not for long.  The few words and exclamations that reached me carried no meaning.  In truth I was worn out.  Very soon the chatter of the stream, deep among the trees—­the stream which we had just now avoided—­confused itself with their talk, and I slept.

Of a sudden I started and sat up erect.  I had been dreaming, and in my dream I had seen two figures pass along the road beyond the fringe of the trees.  They had passed warily, yet hurriedly, across the patch of it now showing white between the olive trunks, under the risen moon.  Yet how could this have happened if I had dreamed it merely?  The moon, when I fell asleep, had not surmounted the ridge behind me, and that patch of road, now showing so white and clear, had been dim, if not quite invisible.  None the less I could be sworn that two figures had passed up the road . . . two men . . .

Marc’antonio and Stephanu?—­reconnoitring perhaps?  I rubbed my eyes.  No:  Marc’antonio and Stephanu lay a few paces away, stretched in profound sleep under the moonlight drifting between the olive boughs; and yonder, past the fringe of the orchard, shone the patch of white high road.  Two figures, half a minute since, had passed along it.  I could be sworn to it, even while reason insisted that I had been dreaming.

I flung off my rug, and, stepping softly to the verge of the orchard’s shadow, peered out upon the road.  To my right—­that is to say, northward—­it stretched away level and visibly deserted so far as the bend, little more than a gunshot distant, where it curved around the base of low cliff and disappeared.  A few paces on this side of the cliff glimmered the rail of a footbridge, and to this spot my ears traced the sound of running water which had been singing through my dreams—­the same stream which had turned us aside to seek our bivouac.  Not even yet could I believe that my two wayfarers had been phantoms merely.  I had given them two minutes’ start at least, and by this time they might easily have passed the bend.  Threading my way swiftly between the boles of the olive trees, I skirted the road to the edge of the stream and stood for a moment at pause before stepping out upon the footbridge and into the moonlight.

The water at my feet, scarcely seen through the dark ferns, ran swiftly and without noise as through a trough channelled in the living rock; but it brought its impetus from a cascade that hummed aloft somewhere in the darkness with a low continuous thunder as of a mill with a turning wheel.  I lifted my head to the sound, and in that instant my ears caught a slight creak from the footbridge on my left.  I faced about, and stood rigid, at gaze.  A woman was stepping across the bridge, there in the moonlight; a slight figure, cloaked and hooded and hurrying fast; a woman, with a gun slung behind her and the barrel of it glimmering.  It was the Princess.