lough-land. All right, my lads, you
haven't got Jack Jervase under yet. Here goes.'

With this he faced the hill and the rain again, and made his difficult
and slippery way upward, impeded by his clinging clothes, and snorting
like a grampus. Right at the crown of the hill, most fortunately for
the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded
refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by
the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a
drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full
minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered a
second time:

'All right, my lads. You haven't got Jack Jervase yet.'

And then, helping himself along from hand to hand, he skirted the
coppice, until he came to the unsheltered brow of the hill. It was well
for him then that he had something to hold on by. Even as it was, he was
clean lifted from his feet, and it was only by a prodigious effort that
he saved himself from being blown away like a leaf. But having once
struggled past the actual summit, he had escaped that danger, and a
minute later, through howling-wind and scourging rain, the fire-lit
windows of the house were beaming 'home!' upon him. Another instant and
his feet were on the firm gravel, and he went scudding before the wind
until he had gained the corner of the house. Here, feeling his troubles
over, he paused once more for breath, and took a dripping way towards
the rear of the building.

He stayed for an instant to glance in at an old-fashioned broad
mullioned window. He looked into a room where a jolly coal fire was
burning in the grate, and blazing up the chimney. About it half-a-dozen
people sat comfortably grouped, and there was a big brown steaming jug
upon the wooden table in the centre of the room, which was paved with
the large square tiles locally called 'quarries.' One of the group about
the fire turned to this jug and poured out from it a generous-looking
stream of dark brown liquid into a number of mugs of the old
Staffordshire ware, which at that time of day was common in rustic
households, though it seems now to have vanished from all places but
the shelves of the collector. The onlooker shivered and spoke under his
breath.

'You're making pretty free with old Jack's old October inside there,
ain't you? Pretty fine old crowd to come home to!--guzzling at my
expense. I'll sort ye.'

A moment later