Up the path he pounded, from time to time shouting angrily to Ranulph to come back, but the distance between them grew ever wider.
Luke's ears began to sing and his brain to turn to fire, and he seemed to lose all sense of reality—it was not on the earth that he was running, but through the airless deserts of space.
He could not have said how long he struggled on, for he who runs hard leaves time behind as well as space. But finally his strength gave way, and he fell, breathless and exhausted, to the ground.
When he had sufficiently recovered to think of starting again the diminishing speck that had been Ranulph had completely vanished.
Poor Luke began to swear—at both Ranulph and himself.
Just then he heard a tinkle of bells, and down the bridle-path came a herd of goats and a very ancient herdsman—to judge, at least, from his bowed walk, for his face was hidden by a hood.
When he had got up to Luke, he stood still, leaning heavily on his stick, and peered down at him from underneath the overhanging flap of his hood with a pair of very bright eyes.
"You've been running hard, young master, by the looks of ye," he said, in a quavering voice. "You be the second young fellow as what I've seen running this morning."
"The second?" cried Luke eagerly. "Was the other a little lad of about twelve years old with red hair, in a green leathern jerkin embroidered in gold?"
"Well, his hair was red and no mistake, though as to the jerkin...." And here he was seized with a violent attack of coughing, and it took all Luke's patience not to grab him by the shoulders and shake the words out of him.