convictions enrooted by God in man. To believe in a shelter is to
believe in God.

However, in that plain of snow there was nothing like a roof. The child
went on, and the waste continued bare as far as eye could see. There had
never been a human habitation on the tableland. It was at the foot of
the cliff, in holes in the rocks, that, lacking wood to build themselves
huts, had dwelt long ago the aboriginal inhabitants, who had slings for
arms, dried cow-dung for firing, for a god the idol Heil standing in a
glade at Dorchester, and for trade the fishing of that false gray coral
which the Gauls called _plin_, and the Greeks _isidis plocamos_.

The child found his way as best he could. Destiny is made up of
cross-roads. An option of path is dangerous. This little being had an
early choice of doubtful chances.

He continued to advance, but although the muscles of his thighs seemed
to be of steel, he began to tire. There were no tracks in the plain; or
if there were any, the snow had obliterated them. Instinctively he
inclined eastwards. Sharp stones had wounded his heels. Had it been
daylight pink stains made by his blood might have been seen in the
footprints he left in the snow.

He recognized nothing. He was crossing the plain of Portland from south
to north, and it is probable that the band with which he had come, to
avoid meeting any one, had crossed it from east to west; they had most
likely sailed in some fisherman's or smuggler's boat, from a point on
the coast of Uggescombe, such as St. Catherine's Cape or Swancry, to
Portland to find the hooker which awaited them; and they must have
landed in one of the creeks of Weston, and re-embarked in one of those