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Up through the defiles at the west a man on foot might make it out, provided he knew each inch of the Secret Way that scaled False Ridge. It was spring, the time of greening ranges and the coming of new calves. Soft winds dipped and wantoned with Lost Valley, in the Cañon Country shy flowers, waxen, heavy-headed on thin stems, clung to the rugged walls.

D'Artagnan walked quickly in the direction indicated, and found one of those exterior staircases that are still to be seen in the yards of our old-fashioned taverns. But there was no getting at the place of sojourn of the future abbe; the defiles of the chamber of Aramis were as well guarded as the gardens of Armida.

Thus they walked, and Ben-Tovit made a martyr's face, shook his head and groaned skilfully, while Samuel nodded compassionately and uttered exclamations from time to time, and from the deep, narrow defiles, out of the distant, burning plains, rose the black night. It seemed as though it wished to hide from the view of heaven the great crime of the earth. Hush! Hush! Hush! Come closer to me.

"What is the matter, Nadia?" he asked. "Our two traveling companions, Michael." "The Frenchman and the Englishman whom we met in the defiles of the Ural?" "Yes." Michael started, for the strict incognito which he wished to keep ran a risk of being betrayed.

We continued our journey through most magnificent defiles, and under long avenues of the most superb trees, until, deeply embosomed in the very heart of the eternal forest, we came to a shady clump of bamboos, overhanging, with their ostrich feather like plumes, a round pool of water, mantled or creamed over with a bright green coating, as if it had been vegetable velvet, but nothing akin to the noisome scum that ferments on a stagnant pool in England.

"It seems to me probable, Marquis, as it does to you, that the French will advance by this line, but it is possible that they may follow the north bank of the Minho and cross at Salvatierra or Tuy. By that route they would have several rivers to cross but no mountains or defiles. Were they to throw troops across there they would meet with no opposition until they arrived at Oporto.

Then, again, there are other defiles on the river beside the one I have already described, and many other points of interest which I might mention.

This prince, at the head of a band of Moorish adventurers, had succeeded in obtaining some important advantages over the Spaniards in the defiles of Malaga, A.D. 1483, Heg. 888. His achievements having won for him the hearts of his countrymen, Zagel now conceived the design of dethroning his brother and nephew, and of appropriating the dominions of both to himself.

Up in the Albanian Mountains the paths and trails were already choked, while chilling blasts of sleet-laden winds howled through the defiles. The way from Upper Serbia to Monastir led across great, bleak slopes, which were now being lashed by these terrible winter storms.

So close and intricate were many of the defiles through which the journey led them that, had one tithe of the treason which they came to punish, ever existed, save in the diseased imagination of their monarch, not one man would have been left to tell the tale.