sound of innumerable armies marching across the earth, but he stumbled
on. And at last, though his right side brushed against the wall, he none
the less struck against it also with his chest. He was too dazed for the
moment to understand what had happened; all the breath he had left was
knocked clean out of his body; he dropped in a huddle on the ground.

In a little he recovered his breath; he listened and could no longer
hear any sound of voices; he began to consider. He reached a hand out in
front of him and touched the wall; he reached out a hand to the right of
him and touched the wall again. The wall projected then abruptly and
made a right angle.

Now Wogan had spent his boyhood at Rathcoffey among cliffs and rocks.
This wall, he reflected, could not be more than twelve feet high. Would
his strength last out? He came to the conclusion that it must.

He took off his heavy boots and flung them one by one over the wall.
Then he pulled off his coat at the cost of some pain and an added
weakness, for the coat was stuck to his wounds and had roughly staunched
them. He could feel the blood again soaking his shirt. There was all the
more need, then, for hurry. He stood up, jammed his back into the angle
of the wall, stretched out his arms on each side, pressing with his
elbows and hands, and then bending his knees crossed his legs tailor
fashion, and set the soles of his stockinged feet firmly against the
bricks on each side. He was thus seated as it were upon nothing, but
retaining his position by the pressure of his arms and feet and his
whole body. Still retaining this position, very slowly, very
laboriously, he worked himself up the angle, stopping now and then to
regain his breath, now and then slipping back an inch. But he mounted
towards the top, and after a while the back of his head no longer