“I suppose I shall drop down into the Settlement presently,” she said to herself, as she tramped doggedly onward.
Her weariness was beginning to make itself very plainly felt now, and she had a thoroughly exhausted sensation, which was due to want of food. She had not had a proper meal since her early breakfast, and now it was late in the evening.
The valley seemed endless, and when at length she reached its extreme point, it was only to find that it forked, one way going down through a thickly wooded ravine, the other mounting a barren hillside.
Mrs. Nichols was always fond of saying, “When in doubt, take the way which seems easiest;” but although Nell remembered this well enough, she at once resolved in this case to take the hardest way, because once down in the timbered valley she could see nothing but her immediate surroundings. But if she got on to higher ground, she might be able to get some idea of her whereabouts, and luckily she appeared to have got clear of the zone of white mist.
The long upward slope was higher than she had thought it to be. Before she reached the top the sun was down, and the blue grey shadows of twilight were filling in the hollows of the hills, and blurring the outlines of the wooded slopes.
“I may see a camp fire, or a lighted window. If not I shall just sit still for half an hour until the moon rises,” she said to herself, as with sore feet and tired ankles, she toiled wearily up that long, long hill.
It was cooler at the top; a moaning night wind sighed across the great waste, and Nell, who was wearing only a thin cotton blouse, shivered from the cold, as she stood letting her keen gaze travel all round through the gloom.
“What was that?” she cried out, almost shouting in her excitement; for far away, still to the left, was a point of light, which in the distance looked like a camp fire.
“There it is; some one has just lighted a fire to cook supper,” she said, talking to herself, because the sound of her own voice somehow took away her horrible sense of loneliness.
She hurried on down the slope, having to go warily now because of the trouble to see her way. There were rocks and holes in the earth to be avoided on the higher ground, but lower down it would be soft spots which she had to avoid, and these were the most dangerous of all.