Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/66

 and the faint lines of dust which spoke of highroads. Last of all I looked into the blue May sky, and there I saw that which set my pulses racing. Low down in the south a monoplane was climbing into the heavens. I was as certain as if I had been told that that aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did not belong to the police. For an hour or two I watched it from a pit of heather. It flew low along the hill-tops and then in narrow circles back over the valley up which I had come. Then it seemed to change mind, rose to a great height and flew away back to the south.

I did not like this espionage from the air, and I began to think less well of the countryside I had chosen for a refuge. These heather hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were in the sky, and I must find a different kind of sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction to the green country beyond the ridge for there I should find woods and stone houses.

About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white ribbon of road which