object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she wore a watch.
She blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped through.

"Ah!" she said, as if surprised.

The light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary
irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. That
consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still
enveloped. 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. The whole secret of following these
incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to
show a turnpike road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in
the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden
spots. To a walker practised in such places a difference between impact
on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is
perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe.

The solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windy
tune still played on the dead heathbells. She did not turn her head to
look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence
as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a score of the
small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. They roamed at large on the
undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detract much from the
solitude.