CUMMANSHEiMENSLAIGE 103 



So we continued our journey, and the Australian 

 exclaimed : ^* I have been studying the tracks on 

 the road, and there has been some loose driving 

 here, and not so long ago, for they are quite 

 fresh ; " and as we proceeded he said, " Will you 

 go slowly here, and let me examine them ? " 



Our road now branched off to the left from the 

 main valley, and lay across an unfenced moor, and 

 the powdering of snow showed every mark con- 

 spicuously, which my friend read like a book. 



" Look here," he said, " this chap has been gallop- 

 ing hard and swaying from one side of the road 

 to the other," as he pointed out tracks now running 

 close to the shallow ditch close to the bank, and 

 now perilously near the edge, where a row of stones 

 was all the parapet to guard a wheel from going 

 over the ten foot drop into a watercourse on the 

 other side. ^^It's a broad flat-tyred trap, probably 

 a grocer's van, and there is another lighter trap, 

 with narrow round tyres. And, by Jove, the fellow 

 has been racing — at any rate the rear trap has been 

 flogging and trying to pass." 



Sure enough, a whip broken through the whale- 

 bone, and marked as if it had been run over, lay 

 across the road, and Moncriefif's surmise appeared 

 to be correct, for the tracks now showed a less rapid 

 pace and straighter going. At the foot of a hill the 

 sharp eyes of the tracker picked up a cap by the 

 side of the road, and shortly after this the two traps 

 seemed to have pulled up, for the road was paddled 

 with footmarks, and strewn with countless spent 

 matches. 



At the end of the road leading through the ford 



