The rain still fell unceasingly through the pit-mirk, and I was as sodden and bleached as the bent I trod on.

A night on the hills had no terrors for me; but I was mortally cold and furiously hungry, and my temper grew bitter against the world.

I had forgotten the girl and her song, and desired above all things on earth a dry bed and a chance of supper.
I had been plunging and slipping in the dark mosses for maybe two hours when, looking down from a little rise, I caught a gleam of light.
Instantly my mood changed to content.

It could only be a herd's cottage, where I might hope for a peat fire, a bicker of brose, and, at the worst, a couch of dry bracken.
I began to run, to loosen my numbed limbs, and presently fell headlong over a little scaur into a moss-hole.

When I crawled out, with peat plastering my face and hair, I found I had lost my notion of the light's whereabouts.