“Yes, sir.  Captain O’Connor ordered them to take their breakfast ration of bread, and he told me to see that their water bottles were filled; and—­” (and here he moved closer up to Ralph, so that he should not be heard by the men) “he gave me a couple of bottles of whisky to mix with the water, and told me to fill the bottles myself, so that the men shouldn’t know what was in them till they had their breakfast; otherwise there would be none left by the time they wanted to eat their bread.  He is always thoughtful the captain is.”

“That’s a very good plan, sergeant.  I shall bear it in mind myself for the future.  They will want something before they get back after a fourteen-mile march.”

The fine mist continued steadily as they tramped along; but the night seemed to grow darker and darker.  They turned off from the road; and as they began to ascend the track along the valley the cloud seemed to settle round them.  The excise officer walked ahead, keeping upon the path.  Ralph followed as closely as he could in his footsteps; but although almost touching him he could not make out his figure in the darkness.

“Tell the men to follow in single file, sergeant,” he said; “keeping touch with each other.  As long as we are on the beaten track we know we are right, but there may be bowlders or anything else close by on one side or the other.”

Marching as closely as they could to each other the party proceeded.

“How on earth are you going to find the place where we turn off, Mr. Fitzgibbon?” Ralph asked.

“We shall find it easy enough sir.  The path regularly forks, and there is a pile of stones at the junction, which makes as good a guide as you can want on a dark night.  We can’t miss that even on a night like this.”

Ralph had struck a light with his flint and steel, and looked at his watch at the point where they turned off from the road, and he did the same thing two or three times as they went along.

“It’s an hour and twenty minutes since we turned off, Mr. Fitzgibbon.  Even allowing for our stoppages when we have got off the path, we ought to be near the turning now.”

“Yes, I fancy we are not far off now, sir.  I can feel that we are rising more sharply, and there is a rise in the last hundred yards or so before we reach the place where the road forks.  We had better go a little more slowly now, sir.”

Another five minutes there was a stumble and a fall in front of Ralph.

“Halt!” he exclaimed sharply.  “What is it, Mr. Fitzgibbon?”

“I have fallen over the pile of stones,” the officer said, “and hurt myself confoundedly.”

“Don’t you think we had better halt till daylight?”

“I think we can keep on, sir.  The nearer we get there the better; and if we should miss the path we can halt then and wait till daybreak.”

“Well, we can do that,” Ralph agreed.

“I will go on ahead, sir, twenty or thirty yards at a time and then speak, and you can bring the men on to me, then I will go on again.  It will be slow work, but I can keep the path better if I go at my own pace.”