rambled up its mossy bottom. By this time the day was
wearing late, and the mist was deepening into the darker shades of
night. It is an eery business to be out on the hills at such a season,
for they are deathly quiet except for the lashing of the storm. You
will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream. The
only sound is the drum of the rain on the peat or its plash on a
boulder, and the low surge of the swelling streams. It is the place and
time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met
in the hollow of the mist only one would go away.

I climbed the hill above the Howe burn-head, keeping the wind on my
right cheek as the girl had ordered. That took me along a rough ridge
of mountain pitted with peat-bogs into which I often stumbled. Every
minute I expected to descend and find the young Water of Leith, but if
I held to my directions I must still mount. I see now that the wind
must have veered to the south-east, and that my plan was leading me
into the fastnesses of the hills; but I would have wandered for weeks
sooner than disobey the word of the girl who sang in the rain.
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. I strove to find another hillock