I will say this--speaking as accurately as a man may, so long
afterwards--that when first I spied the house it put no desire in me
but just to give thanks.

For conceive my case. It was near midnight by this; and ever since
dusk I had been tracking the naked moors a-foot, in the teeth of as
vicious a nor'wester as ever drenched a man to the skin, and then blew
the cold home to his marrow. My clothes were sodden; my coat-tails
flapped with a noise like pistol shots; my boots squeaked as I went.
Overhead the October moon was in her last quarter, and might have been
a slice of finger-nail for all the light she afforded. Two-thirds of
the time the wrack blotted her out altogether; and I, with my stick
clipped tight under my arm-pit, eyes puckered up, and head bent like
a butting ram's, but a little aslant, had to keep my wits agog to
distinguish the glimmer of the road from the black heath to right and
left. For three hours I had met neither man nor man's dwelling, and
(for all I knew) was desperately lost. Indeed, at the cross roads, two
miles back, there had been nothing for me but to choose the way that
kept the wind on my face, and it gnawed me like a dog.

Mainly to allay the stinging of my eyes, I pulled up at last, turned
right-about face, leant back against the blast with a hand on my hat,
and surveyed the blackness I had traversed. It was at this instant
that, far away to the left, a point of light caught my notice, faint
but steady; and at once I felt sure it burnt in the window of a house.
"The house," thought I, "is a good mile off, beside the other road,
and the light must have been an inch over my hat-brim for the
last half hour," for my head had been sloped that way. This
reflection--that on so wide a moor I had come near missing the
information I wanted (and perhaps a supper) by one inch--sent a strong