We were too frightened even to shiver. Charlotte’s hand was clutching mine as if it had frozen there and was stuck for good; and through my mind went galloping a dozen or more brigands, robbers, outlaws, and cutthroats, all with blazing eyes and armed with knives and guns. We stood like stone.

After a moment there came the sound of something stirring in the cave—dry leaves, perhaps, rustling; and another voice spoke.

“What is it, you booby?” came calmly out of the darkness, in a clear, rich voice of the sort that actors have: an expressive voice, with a hint of the mountebank about it. “The fleas disturbing you? To deal with fleas, my dear Max, you have only to crack them between your fingernails. They expire in silence. You do not have to make speeches to them and challenge them like a sentry.”

“No, I heard a voice, Doctor,” said the first man. “There’s someone outside, creeping about.”

“Fiddlesticks. I have been lying awake here for hours, meditating on my destiny, and I heard nothing at all but your melodious and trombone-like snorings. You were dreaming of the applause, the roars of acclaim, the demands for an encore, that will follow our performance tomorrow. Go back to sleep, Max; resume your snores.”

“Well, you may be right, Doctor; but I did hear something….”

Silence; then presently, indeed, the snores began again. We relaxed, and tiptoed out of the clearing and back down the path to the waterfall. There we sat on a convenient (if icy) rock and whispered.

“What do we do now?” said Lucy.

“Who were they?” said Charlotte.

“How does Hildi know who they were, stupid?” said Lucy. “They’re robbers, obviously.”

“That other man said something about a performance,” said Charlotte. “They might be actors! They wouldn’t hurt us—they might even let us stay in their cave!”

I thought so, too—but you could never tell. Actors or performing players or traveling showmen are slippery folk, all charm and greasepaint. We’d played host to them often enough at the Jolly Huntsman, and sometimes been paid in coins whose gold wore off as soon as the players’ coach had trundled out of reach; or found that our good linen sheets had changed, by some artistic process, into tom, drab cotton in the course of a single night. No: these two in the cave sounded harmless enough—but I didn’t trust them, all the same.

“It’ll have to be the mountain guide’s hut, Miss Lucy,” I said. “Another hour’s walk…but it’s that much safer, being further up, like….”

“Another hour?” said Charlotte; and indeed she was nearly dropping with fatigue. All the excitement had drained away, and I think she’d have taken the chance of facing the Demon Huntsman himself for the sake of a soft, warm bed just then.