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She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under her arm, and moved on. Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. Those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight.
He went off in a moment; but, running mute, I was obliged to follow; and after a chase of a quarter of a mile I lost sight of him. In following up the foot-track of the wounded deer I heard the distant barking of the dog, by which I knew that he had brought the buck to bay, and I was soon at the spot.
A bleak table-land with here and there a stunted, leafless tree was all that we could discern by the pale light of a new moon. An apparently interminable heath uncrossed by path or foot-track was before us, and our jaded cattle seemed to feel the dreary uncertainty of the prospect as sensitively as ourselves, stumbling and over-reaching at every step.
Now, emerging from the low land, we again left the trees behind us, and rose by a well-beaten foot-track to the primary level of the country, where stone and bare ground prevailed.
Right down among the stunted trees of this ravine went the foot-track which Johnson followed. Darkness had now gathered all around, yet here and there were wild lights struggling with the gloom.
"Well, all this was mighty pretty, but it didn't tell me where to find a meal; so I baled out the boat and paddled along the eastern edge of the lake searching the cliffs for a path, and after an hour or so I hit on what looked to me like a foot-track, zig-zagging up through the creepers and across the face of the rock.
After wending our way along a narrow foot-track in the snow, which twisted about among the tall black trees, we came in sight of what looked like a heap of dirty boards and branches of trees piled together, but the blue smoke curling from the top told that it was a human habitation.
Not merely was the right foot-track different from that of the left, but the way in which its owner put it to the ground must have been different also. The one mark was clear and distinct, cut out in the snow with a firm tread, while the other left a little broken bank at its right edge, and scarcely any impression of the heel. "Slightly lame," I decided.
It is but a small churchyard, and with few monuments of any pretension in it, most of them being slate headstones, standing erect. From the gate at which we entered, a distinct foot-track leads to the corner nearest the riverside, and I turned into it by a sort of instinct, the more readily as I saw a tourist-looking man approaching from that point, and a woman looking among the gravestones.
Without hesitation he turned into the cliff path, and followed it until his quick eyes caught the indistinct foot-track that he had discovered earlier in the evening. With the same decision, the same suggestion of anticipation, he stepped rapidly forward and once more began the sharp ascent.
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