le, so we toasted the Priscilla out of the palms of our hands in
draughts of water from a rill that had the sound of aspen-leaves, such
as I used to listen to in the Riversley meadows, pleasantly familiar.

Several commanding elevations were in sight, some wooded, some bare. We
chose the nearest, to observe the sunset, and concurred in thinking
it unlike English sunsets, though not so very unlike the sunset we had
taken for sunrise on board the Priscilla. A tumbled, dark and light
green country of swelling forest-land and slopes of meadow ran to the
West, and the West from flaming yellow burned down to smoky crimson
across it. Temple bade--me 'catch the disc--that was English enough.' A
glance at the sun's disc confirmed the truth of his observation. Gazing
on the outline of the orb, one might have fancied oneself in England.
Yet the moment it had sunk under the hill this feeling of ours vanished
with it. The coloured clouds drew me ages away from the recollection of
home.

A tower on a distant hill, white among pines, led us to suppose that
Sarkeld must lie somewhere beneath it. We therefore descended straight
toward the tower, instead of returning to the road, and struck
confidently into a rugged path. Recent events had given me the assurance
that in my search for my father I was subject to a special governing
direction. I had aimed at the Bench--missed it--been shipped across sea
and precipitated into the arms of friends who had seen him and could
tell me I was on his actual track, only blindly, and no longer blindly
now.

'Follow the path,' I said, when Temple wanted to have a consultation.

'So we did in the London fog!' said he, with some gloom.

But my retort: 'Hasn't it brought us here?' was a silencer.

Dark night came on. Every height stood for a ruin in our eyes, every dip
an abyss. It grew bewilderingly dark, but the path did not forsake
us, and we expected, at half-hour intervals, to perceive the lights
of Sarkeld, soon to be thundering at one of the inns for admission and
supper. I could hear Temple rehearsing his German vocabulary, 'Brod,
butter, wasser, fleisch, bett,' as we stumbled along. Then it fell to
'Brod, wasser, bett,' and then, 'Bett' by itself, his confession of
fatigue. Our path had frequently the nature of a waterway, and was very
fatiguing, more agreeable to mount than descend, for in mounting the
knees and shins bore the brunt of it, and these sufferers are not such
important servant