I strove to find another hillock, but I seemed now
to be in a flat space of bog. I could only grope blindly forwards away
from the moss-hole, hoping that soon I might come to a lift in the
hill.
Suddenly from the distance of about half a mile there fell on my ears
the most hideous wailing. It was like the cats on a frosty night; it
was like the clanging of pots in a tinker's cart; and it would rise now
and then to a shriek of rhapsody such as I have heard at field-preachings.
Clearly the sound was human, though from what kind of crazy
human creature I could not guess. Had I been less utterly forwandered
and the night less wild, I think I would have sped away from it as fast
as my legs had carried me. But I had little choice. After all, I
reflected, the worst bedlamite must have food and shelter, and, unless
the gleam had been a will-o'-the-wisp, I foresaw a fire. So I hastened
in the direction of the noise.
I came on it suddenly in a hollow of the moss. There stood a ruined
sheepfold, and in the corner of two walls some plaids had been
stretched to make a tent. Before this burned a big fire of heather
roots and bog-wood, which hissed and crackled in the rain. Round it
squatted a score of women, with plaids drawn tight over their heads,
who rocked and moaned like a flight of witches, and two--three men were
on their knees at the edge of the ashes.
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