WHEN THE PARTY MET in the smoking-room that night after dinner two very weary men occupied the deepest arm-chairs. Lamancha was struggling with sleep; Palliser-Yeates was limp with fatigue, far too weary to be sleepy. “I’ve had the devil of a day,” said the latter. “Wattie took me at a racing gallop about thirty miles over bogs and crags. Lord! I’m stiff and footsore. I believe I crawled more than ten miles, and I’ve no skin left on my knees. But we spied the deuce of a lot of ground, and I see my way to the rudiments of a plan. You start off, Charles, while I collect my thoughts.”
But Lamancha was supine.
“I’m too drunk with sleep to talk,” he said. “I prospected all the south side of Haripol—all this side of the Reascuill, you know. I got a good spy from Sgurr Mór, and I tried to get u
