The warm rain beating from the west struck on his uplifted face.

He welcomed it as a friend.

Rain and storm had opened to him the gates of a spiritual citadel.

What could ever wholly close it against him any more?
He felt so strong, so confident! Patience and courage! Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming out from the white mists surging round it.

A shaft of sunlight lay across its upper end, and he caught a marvellous apparition of a sunlit valley hung in air, a pale strip of blue above it, a white thread of steam wavering through it, and all around it and below it the rolling rain-clouds.
Suddenly, between him and that enchanter's vision he saw a dark slim figure against the mists, walking before him along the road.