"Roquebrune! France!" he exclaimed. "We must go there? Why?"
"I do not know," Warrisden answered. "A telegram reached me at Tangier. I kept it."
He took the telegram from his pocket and handed it to Stretton, who read it and sat thinking.
"We have time," said Warrisden, "just time enough, I think, if we travel fast."
"Good," said Stretton, as he returned the telegram. "But I was not thinking of the time."
He did not explain what had caused him to start at the mention of Roquebrune; but after sitting for a little while longer in silence, he betook himself to bed.
Early the next morning they rode out of the Bab Sagma upon the thronged highway over the plain to Mequinez.
The caravans diminished, striking off into this or that track. Very soon there remained with them only one party of five Jews mounted on small donkeys. They began to ride through high shrubs and bushes of fennel over rolling ground. Stretton talked very little, and as the track twisted and circled across the plain he was constantly standing up in his stirrups and searching the horizon.
"There does not seem to be one straight path in Morocco," he exclaimed impatiently. "Look at this one. There's no reason why it should not run straight. Yet it never does."
Indeed, the track lay across that open plain like some brown, monstrous serpent of a legend.