that way. After walking forward about two hundred yards, they came
upon a mine indeed, but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal,
ruinous place, with nothing but the wreck of its works and
buildings left to speak for it. Here, there were a few sheep
feeding. The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he
recognised the marks on them--then thought he did not--finally gave
up the sheep in despair--and walked on just as ignorant of the
whereabouts of the party as ever.

The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the
dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the
time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr.
Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to
hobble on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that
another ten minutes at most would find him at the end of his last
physical resources. He had just made up his mind on this point,
and was about to communicate the dismal result of his reflections
to his companions, when the mist suddenly brightened, and begun to
lift straight ahead. In another minute, the landlord, who was in
advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree. Before long, other trees
appeared--then a cottage--then a house beyond the cottage, and a
familiar line of road rising behind it. Last of all, Carrock
itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand. The
party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but
had wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why--away,
far down on the very moor by which they had approached the base of
Carrock that morning.

The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that
the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout