The boys ran up the alley, Sidney leading with both the blanket rolls, and Raymond following a short distance behind. Close after them came the man who had rushed around the corner of the jail, and who was evidently doing his best to overtake them.

The boys found that the alley climbed up a steep slope, and they stumbled up the ascent with breathless haste. The man who pursued them was shorter, older, and less agile, so, although he was carrying nothing, and Sidney, at least, was well loaded, the boys managed to keep ahead. Raymond, however, stepped on a loose stone and floundered along, barely saving himself, with his hands on the rising ground, from a complete fall. He felt, rather than saw, that their pursuer was close upon him. He made up his mind that if it came to a grapple he would call out to Sidney for help, and run the risk of bringing others whom they would not want. But with a supreme effort he recovered his balance in time to save himself from the grasp of the man behind.

Up, up, they struggled until their pounding hearts and panting lungs nearly suffocated them. The walls continued along the sides with no change that was perceptible in the darkness, and the boys wondered on what plan the village could be constructed.

At last Sidney came to the end of the alley and found there was an opening, a similar narrow passageway, to the left. Around that corner the alley extended on a level, and having made the turn, Sidney’s road was much easier. He soon came to a blind wall across the passage, and groping along its face, in the corner between that wall and the wall of the alley, he felt a ladder.

Sidney hesitated for a moment, wondering where the ladder could lead, but as he could find no opening in the wall, and as he could not well turn back, he went up it. After climbing eight or ten feet he stepped over the top of the ladder to a level surface that was apparently a dozen feet or so wide. At the left there seemed to be only space, but on the right rose a wall in which dimly showed an opening. He stood and listened. From down in the alley came the noise of Raymond and his pursuer running. Then for a moment there was a pause in the sound, followed by a heavy thud, and in another moment the sound of a blow.

Sidney strained his eyes to see into the gloom below, to discover, if possible, what was happening there. Failing in that he threw his blankets down on the ground and grasped the ladder to descend, fearing that harm had come to his brother. As he did so, one person instead of two came running along the darkness below, and the figure blundered into the wall at the end.

“Is that you, Ray?” Sidney whispered.

“Yes,” was the reply from below.

“There is a ladder, a little to your left,” he directed.

When Raymond had reached the angle of the alley, the man behind was so close that he believed he would be overtaken, especially as his breath, from the violent running uphill, was becoming very short. So he decided to resort to a trick. After running for a few feet along the level floor of the alley beyond the turn, he dropped to one knee and turned to face his pursuer, crouching closely to the ground. The fellow came on at full tilt and Raymond grasped him by one leg and rose with his burden. The impetus the man had acquired in running sent him hurtling through the air and he crashed, head first, against the wall. Stunned by the blow, he fell in a huddled heap.

Instead of running on after Sidney, as Raymond’s first impulse had been when his pursuer was placed hors de combat, with a sudden thought he stopped to examine his fallen antagonist. Something in the aspect of the man as he was flying over Raymond’s head had seemed familiar. He turned the form over to bring the face upward and, stooping, peered closely. It was just as he had suddenly suspected, the man was the English-speaking policeman. That meant that he probably had a revolver stuck in his belt, and Raymond immediately fumbled under the man’s coat. Pulling out the gun which he felt there, an instant’s examination, even in the dark, convinced him that it was indeed a .38 caliber. He wanted to whoop for joy that he once more had a serviceable weapon to fit the ammunition which they still possessed. It did not occur to him for a moment that in appropriating the revolver he was doing practically the same thing that the policeman had attempted when he coveted their money. The gun was so precisely what they needed that it only seemed as though a kind fortune had presented it to him.

As Raymond straightened up with the revolver in his hand the prostrate man raised himself to his elbow. The thick lamb’s wool cap which he wore, and which is the usual head-covering of men in the Caucasus, had so protected his head that the shock of being thrown against the wall had only slightly stunned him. Raymond was confronted with a new danger. With the man conscious, he would not be able to hide from him or to escape him in the end, though he might at first outdistance him in running.

The thought of a possible return to the filthy jail was more than Raymond could endure; he simply must prevent any danger of that. He had a savage, momentary impulse to shoot the man as he lay before him, but he could not bring himself to do that, and, anyway, it would make too much noise. There was one other way, and clubbing the pistol he brought it down with full force on the man’s head. The fellow sank back on the ground without a sound and lay without moving. Raymond sped on and in a moment came plump against the wall at the end, when Sidney hailed him, and he climbed the ladder.

“Where is that fellow who was chasing us?” asked Sidney in a whisper, when his brother appeared at the head of the ladder.

“I tripped him up and he’s down there in the alley,” replied Raymond in an equally low tone.

“I thought I heard the sound of a blow,” said Sidney.

“You did; I clouted him over the head with his own revolver, and I’ve got the gun here.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that, Ray.”

“But what could I have done, Sid?—just turn my money over to him and wait meekly to see if he wanted to kill me?”

“Of course not, but you needn’t have taken his gun.”

“I wasn’t going to lose so good a chance to get a gun, and I simply had to make him keep quiet till I could get out of the way.”

“Well, I’m glad enough to have you safe here, anyway.”

“What kind of a place is this?” asked Raymond.

“I can’t imagine,” replied his brother. “I thought it might be the roof of a house when I climbed the ladder, but there seems to be a house of some sort up here; I think that is a door.”

“Suppose we go and investigate,” suggested Raymond.

“We must be pretty careful if we do; there may be people here.”

The boys proceeded cautiously toward the dim opening in the wall that rose on their right. The surface over which they walked was smooth, but had the feel, under their feet, of earth. They paused outside the doorway and listened intently, but could hear no sound.

“I’m going to strike a match,” said Raymond, “and see what there is inside.”

“Don’t make a light out here,” remonstrated Sidney; “that would show us too plainly to any one who might be looking this way. I think it would be safer to step inside the door. I don’t believe there is any one here or we should have heard some sound.”

Raymond stepped carefully inside the door and struck a match, holding it up till the flame burned steadily. When the light shone clear it revealed a good-sized room that was perfectly bare. The walls were of rough stone, similar to the walls of the jail, and the floor was of earth packed hard and smooth. There was no indication that the room had been occupied, and it certainly was empty enough then.

The match died down and Raymond turned back to the doorway where Sidney waited. The mystery of their surroundings made both of them thoughtful,—the strange, narrow alley that climbed the steep hill, shut in on both sides by walls or buildings, they did not know which; then the house in whose door they were standing, that was reached, so far as they knew, only by a ladder, and that was so providentially unoccupied; the silence that covered the place, too, though to be sure it was probably after midnight, an hour when a town should be silent, if ever. All the conditions were weird and mysterious.

The boys stood in the doorway and tried vainly to pierce the darkness about them. The sky was clear and starlit, but there was no moon, and the mountains, which seemingly nearly surrounded them, were black and without form, and shut out most of what light there would otherwise have been. In front of them was the narrow, level space on which they had landed when they climbed the ladder, and beyond that fell a slope which appeared, in the gloom, to be set with knobs. Whether those knobs were rocks or buildings the boys could not tell. They thought, however, that they must be buildings, else what had become of the village? Back of them rose the mountains.

“What do you make of it, Sid?” asked Raymond, still in a whisper, for they had a sort of feeling that there were people near.

“I can’t make anything of it. If this is a town, and I suppose it must be, it’s the most curious one I ever heard of. We’ll just have to wait till daylight, and I hope we shan’t find then that we are in the midst of a hornet’s nest of savage mountaineers.”

“We’d better go into that room and get some sleep,” said Raymond; “I begin to feel pretty used up after that run uphill. I should think you’d be too, with the heavy load you had to carry.”

“Yes, it was a hard stunt. What do you say to pulling the ladder up, Ray? Then if anybody comes into the alley they can’t get up here without bringing another ladder.”

“That’s a good idea, Sid. It takes you to make things safe.”

“And it takes you, Ray, to clear the road of undesirables. What do you think that fellow down in the alley will do when he comes to his senses? I don’t suppose you really killed him?”

“I’m afraid not, his cap was too thick. I don’t know whether he will imagine that we came up here, or not.”

“You know when he said there was no other village near, I told him that we should have to go back to Timour Khan Shoura. I wanted to fool him, and maybe he’ll think we have started back that way.”

“I hope he will, and chase after us.” While the boys were talking, they carefully drew the ladder up and laid it down, well back from the edge. Then they went into the room, opened up their blankets close to the wall on one side of the door, and in about a minute were both fast asleep.