It meandered; it hesitated; it never knew its own mind, but twisted and turned and thought better of it a dozen times in half a mile.

It was a hill with short cuts favourably known to small boys and to tramps with a distaste for highways; but this tramp, not being a real one, knew none of them, and was compelled to do exactly as the hill did.
The result was, that when at last it slipped into the cool shade of a row of beeches at its base, its victim was as exhausted as itself.
He was thirsty, too, and, worse still, he knew from a certain dizzy blindness that one of his bad headaches was coming on--and there still lay another mile between him and the town.

Pressing his hand against his eyes to restore for the moment their normal clearness of vision, he saw, a short way down the road, a gate; and through the gate and behind some trees, the white gleam of a building.

But better than all, he saw, between the gate and the building, a red pump! Then the blindness and pain descended again, and he stumbled on more by faith than by sight; blundering through the half-open gate, his precarious course directed wholly by the pump's exceeding redness, which shone like a beacon fire ahead.
Fortunately, it was a real pump with real water and a sucker in good standing, warranted to need no priming.

At the stroke of the red handle the good, cool water gurgled and arose with a delightful "plop!" It splashed from the spout freely upon the face and hands of the victim of the long hill--delicious, life-giving! The delight it brought seemed compensation almost for heat and pain and weariness.