I
followed him as obediently as a child. When he ran so did I; when he
crawled my forehead was next his heel. After the grass-lands came
broken hillocks with little streams in the bottoms. Through these we
twisted, moving with less care, and presently we had left the hills and
were looking over a wide, shadowy plain.
The moon was three-quarters full, and was just beginning to climb the
sky. Shalah sniffed the wind, which blew from the south-west, and set
off at a sharp angle towards the north. We were now among the woods
again, and the tangled undergrowth tried me sore. We had been going for
about three hours, and, though I was hard and spare from much travel in
the sun, my legs were not used to this furious foot marching. My feet
grew leaden, and, to make matters worse, we dipped presently into a big
swamp, where we mired to the knees and often to the middle. It would
have been no light labour at any time to cross such a place, pulling
oneself by the tangled shrubs on to the rare patches of solid ground.
But now, when I was pretty weary, the toil was about the limit of my
strength. When we emerged on hard land I was sobbing like a stricken
deer. But Shalah had no mercy. He took me through the dark cedars at
the same tireless pace, and in the gloom I could see him flitting
ahead of me, his shoulders squared, and his limbs as supple as a
race-horse's.
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