He came back in twenty minutes with news of some kind of dwelling a couple of miles up the stream.

He went off to collect Peter, and, humping our baggage, Blenkiron and I plodded up the waterside.

Darkness had fallen thick by this time, and we took some bad tosses among the bogs.

When Hussin and Peter overtook us they found a better road, and presently we saw a light twinkle in the hollow ahead.
It proved to be a wretched tumble-down farm in a grove of poplars--a foul-smelling, muddy yard, a two-roomed hovel of a house, and a barn which was tolerably dry and which we selected for our sleeping-place.
The owner was a broken old fellow whose sons were all at the war, and he received us with the profound calm of one who expects nothing but unpleasantness from life.
By this time we had recovered our tempers, and I was trying hard to put my new Kismet philosophy into practice.

I reckoned that if risks were foreordained, so were difficulties, and both must be taken as part of the day's work.