Presently I was on a steep hill-side, which I ascended only to drop
through a tangle of screes and jumper to the mires of a great bog. When
I had crossed this more by luck than good guidance, I had another
scramble on the steeps where the long, tough heather clogged my
footsteps.
About eight o'clock I awoke to the conviction that I was hopelessly
lost, and must spend the night in the wilderness. The rain still fell
unceasingly through the pit-mirk, and I was as sodden and bleached as
the bent I trod on. A night on the hills had no terrors for me; but I
was mortally cold and furiously hungry, and my temper grew bitter
against the world. I had forgotten the girl and her song, and desired
above all things on earth a dry bed and a chance of supper.
I had been plunging and slipping in the dark mosses for maybe two hours
when, looking down from a little rise, I caught a gleam of light.
Instantly my mood changed to content. It could only be a herd's
cottage, where I might hope for a peat fire, a bicker of brose, and, at
the worst, a couch of dry bracken.
I began to run, to loosen my numbed limbs, and presently fell headlong
over a little scaur into a moss-hole. When I crawled out, with peat
plastering my face and hair, I found I had lost my notion of the
light's whereabouts.
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