ading their
way through thickets; apparently finding something amusing in the
patriarchal colonies of rabbit burrows that tripped them up, and
stopping to argue, though hardly in earnest, as to whether they had
passed that way or not, when some white-barked tree, or other
landmark, loomed suddenly out of the thickening mist. Once it seemed
the fog was going to lift; Julia thought she saw the outline of a
distant hill, but either it was closed in again directly, or else she
mistook a thicker fold of cloud for a more solid object, for it was
lost almost before she pointed it out.

For something over two hours they walked and stumbled, and went up
small ascents and came down small declines; then suddenly they came
upon the white-barked tree again. It was the same one that they had
seen more than an hour and a half ago; Rawson-Clew recognised it by a
peculiar warty growth where the branches forked; they had now
approached it from the other side, but clearly it was the same one,
and they had come round in a circle.

He stopped and pointed it out to her. "I am afraid," he said, "we had
better do what is recommended when the clouds come down on the
mountains."

"And that is?" Julia asked.

"Sit down and wait till they shift."

She could not but see the advisability of this, also she was very
tired, the going for these two hours had not been easy, and it had
come at the end of a long day. She would not admit, even to herself,
that she was tired, but she was, so she agreed to the waiting; after
all, it was impossible to pretend longer that they were going to get
home easily, and were not really hopelessly astray.

"We will go a little way in among the trees," Rawson-Clew said; "it is
more sheltered, and we shall be able to find the way quite as easily
from one place as another when the fog lifts."

They found as sheltered a spot as they could, and sat down under a big
tree; as they did so his hand came in contact with Julia's wet sleeve
and cold arm. "How cold you are!" he said. "You have nothing on."

"Oh, yes, I have," she assured him. "I did not avail myself of your
permission this morning."

He took off his coat and put it round her.

But she threw it off again. "That won't do at all," she said; "now you
have nothing on, and that is much more improper; women may sit in
their shirt sleeves, men may not."

"Don't be absurd!" he said authoritatively; "you are to keep that on,"
and he wrapped it about her with a d