more and more slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now the
ground grew very bad indeed. Instead of soft turf and springy
heather, he met great patches of flat limestone rock, just like
ill-made pavements, with deep cracks between the stones and ledges,
filled with ferns; so he had to hop from stone to stone, and now
and then he slipped in between, and hurt his little bare toes,
though they were tolerably tough ones; but still he would go on and
up, he could not tell why.

What would Tom have said if he had seen, walking over the moor
behind him, the very same Irishwoman who had taken his part upon
the road? But whether it was that he looked too little behind him,
or whether it was that she kept out of sight behind the rocks and
knolls, he never saw her, though she saw him.

And now he began to get a little hungry, and very thirsty; for he
had run a long way, and the sun had risen high in heaven, and the
rock was as hot as an oven, and the air danced reels over it, as it
does over a limekiln, till everything round seemed quivering and
melting in the glare.

But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and still less to drink.

The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries; but they were
only in flower yet, for it was June. And as for water; who can
find that on the top of a limestone rock? Now and then he passed
by a deep dark swallow-hole, going down into the earth, as if it
was the chimney of some dwarfs house underground; and more than
once, as he passed, he could hear water falling, trickling,
tinkling, many many feet below. How he longed to get down to it,