heels. Had it been
daylight pink stains made by his blood might have been seen in the
footprints he left in the snow.

He recognized nothing. He was crossing the plain of Portland from south
to north, and it is probable that the band with which he had come, to
avoid meeting any one, had crossed it from east to west; they had most
likely sailed in some fisherman's or smuggler's boat, from a point on
the coast of Uggescombe, such as St. Catherine's Cape or Swancry, to
Portland to find the hooker which awaited them; and they must have
landed in one of the creeks of Weston, and re-embarked in one of those
of Easton. That direction was intersected by the one the child was now
following. It was impossible for him to recognize the road.

On the plain of Portland there are, here and there, raised strips of
land, abruptly ended by the shore and cut perpendicular to the sea. The
wandering child reached one of these culminating points and stopped on
it, hoping that a larger space might reveal further indications. He
tried to see around him. Before him, in place of a horizon, was a vast
livid opacity. He looked at this attentively, and under the fixedness of
his glance it became less indistinct. At the base of a distant fold of
land towards the east, in the depths of that opaque lividity (a moving
and wan sort of precipice, which resembled a cliff of the night), crept
and floated some vague black rents, some dim shreds of vapour. The pale
opacity was fog, the black shreds were smoke. Where there is smoke there
are men. The child turned his steps in that direction.

He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the descent,
among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by the mist, what seemed
to be either a sandbank or a tongue of land, joining probably to the
plains of the horizon the tableland he had just crossed. It was evident
he must pass that way.

He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a diluvian alluvium
which is called Chess Hill.

He began to descend the side of the plateau.

The descent was difficult and rough. It was (with less of ruggedness,
however) the reverse of the ascent he had made on leaving the creek.
Every ascent is balanced by a decline. After having clambered up he
crawled down.

He leapt from one rock to another at the risk of a sprain, at the risk
of falling into the vague depths below. To save himself when he slipped
on the rock or on the ice, he caught hold of handfuls of