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 should say quite four hours,” said Breton.  “In that case, it’s well past two o’clock, and the light will be breaking in another hour or so.  Now, once across this stream, what shall we do?”

“What have we come to do?  Go to the cottage, of course!”

“Wait a bit.  No need to startle them.  By the fact they’ve got a light, I take it that they’re up.  Look there!”

As he spoke, a figure crossed the window passing between it and the light.