Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/120

 if you open your mouth, as sure as there's a God above me, I'll wring your neck. Savez?"

I enjoyed that evening's ride. We ran eight miles down the valley, through a village or two, and I could not help noticing several strange-looking folk lounging by the roadside. These were the watchers who would have had much to say to me if I had come in other garb or company. As it was, they looked incuriously on. One touched his cap in salute, and I responded graciously.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen which, as I remembered from the map, led into an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon the villages were left behind, then the farms, and then even the wayside cottages. Presently we came to a lonely moor where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog-pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly reversed the car and restored to Mr. Joplev his belongings.

"A thousand thanks," I said. "There's more use in you than I thought. Now be off and find the police."