you can stick it?"

Spargo set his teeth.

"Go on!" he said.

Up hill, down dale, now up to his ankles in peaty ground, now tearing
his shins, now bruising his knees, Spargo, yearning for the London
lights, the well-paved London streets, the convenient taxi-cab, even
the humble omnibus, plodded forward after his guide. It seemed to him
that they had walked for ages and had traversed a whole continent of
mountains and valley when at last Breton, halting on the summit of a
wind-swept ridge, laid one hand on his companion's shoulder and pointed
downward with the other.

"There!" he said. "There!"

Spargo looked ahead into the night. Far away, at what seemed to him to
be a considerable distance, he saw the faint, very faint glimmer of a
light--a mere spark of a light.

"That's the cottage," said Breton, "Late as it is, you see, they're up.
And here's the roughest bit of the journey. It'll take me all my time
to find the track across this moor, Spargo, so step carefully after
me--there are bogs and holes hereabouts."

Another hour had gone by ere the two came to the cottage. Sometimes the
guiding light had vanished, blotted out by intervening rises in the
ground; always, when they saw it again, they were slowly drawing nearer
to it. And now when they were at last close to it, Spargo realized that
he found himself in one of the loneliest places he had ever been
capable of imagining--so lonely and desolate a spot he had certainly
never seen. In the dim light he could see a narrow, crawling stream,
making its way down over rocks and stones from the high ground of Great
Shunnor Fell. Opposite to the place at which they stood, on the edge of
the moorland, a horseshoe like formation of ground was backed by a ring
of fir and pine; beneath this protecting fringe of trees stood a small
building of grey stone which looked as if it had been originally built
by some shepherd as a pen for the moorland sheep. It was of no more
than one storey in height, but of some length; a considerable part of
it was hidden by shrubs and brushwood. And from one uncurtained,
blindless window the light of a lamp shone boldly into the fading
darkness without.

Breton pulled up on the edge of the crawling stream.

"We've got to get across there, Spargo," he said. "But as we're already
soaked to the knee it doesn't matter about getting another wetting.
Have you any idea how long we've been walking?"

"Hours--days--years!" replied Spargo.

"I s