All through the morning they rode, resting for an hour or two at noon; and in the late afternoon they remounted their horses and fared forth once more in search of the camping-place Sir Richard had in mind.
By dint of compasses and an unusually accurate sense of location, the older man had staked their course with admirable directness, and as the moon rose they drew rein at the appointed destination, a wild and rocky valley whose caves offered a natural protection from the chill night breeze which blew with disconcerting freshness over the loose, salt-impregnated sand.
Here, thanks to the ever-useful thermos flask, they enjoyed a sufficient meal of hot soup, followed by a multitude of sandwiches of divers kinds; and when, after a pull at their respective flasks, the two lit their pipes and stretched their limbs, cramped by the day's exertions, Anstice, at least, felt more at peace with the world than he had felt for years.
To be hastening towards Iris Cheniston, to be sure of meeting her within twenty-four hours, sure of seeing the kind friendliness of her wide grey eyes, of hearing the soft cooing notes of her voice, was enough to make a man content with his lot; and the fact that he was journeying towards her in order to do his best to save the life of the one human being who stood between him and his happiness lost all its irony when he remembered that it was in reality Iris herself for whom this service was undertaken.
The next morning found them early astir; and as their horses danced over the sand, literally throwing the miles behind them, Sir Richard's spirits, which had been somewhat fluctuating, rose with a bound. He whistled gaily as they rode, ever and anon breaking off to conjecture on the nature of the welcome they might reasonably expect to receive; and when he spoke, as he did frequently, of his son-in-law, his prognostications, in striking contrast with his former pessimism, were couched in the most hopeful language.
Strange to say, as his spirits rose, so did those of Anstice sink. An odd foreboding, a premonition for which he could not account, displaced the gladness from his heart; and as they rode on and ever onwards he told himself that they were surely riding towards tragedy.
Possibly it was the Celtic strain in him which rendered him liable to these strange and perverse forebodings of evil. On sundry other occasions in his earlier youth he had fallen with appalling swiftness from the heights of glad anticipation to the depths of a certain and most unwelcome gloom; and now, quite suddenly, he found himself involved in a black and rayless melancholy which seemed to fortell some catastrophic happening at hand.