That was bad news. We came to a lonely wooden hut, like a very small barn. I stopped. “Tell me frankly if you think you can’t go on. In that case we’ll break in here. We’ll have a certain amount of shelter inside. There is no danger. To-morrow will be Sunday and nobody is likely to come near us. It is much better to stop in time, before you have drawn too much upon your reserve strength. The situation is not precarious enough for that. You’ll want that later on.”
“No,” he insisted; “I can go on.”
At last we turned into the road we were looking for. The rain had changed to sleet. The road was slippery with ice. Progress would have been slow under any circumstances, but it was slower on account of Wallace’s failing strength. He was plucky, however, and he kept going.
The usual thirst began to trouble us. Fortunately we had filled our water-bottles at the hotel in Hanover. To husband our supply on Wallace’s behalf, I contented myself with sucking the ice which I peeled in lumps from my hat brim.
In due course we came to the first clearing. The outlines of a barn on the right, and a house on the left, seemed familiar. “Let’s rest a bit,” I proposed to Wallace, for he seemed almost done. He propped himself in a sitting posture against the wall of the barn, while I scouted around.
There was a farmyard behind the structure. The barn itself consisted of a loft, reared on strong uprights. Only half the space below was enclosed by boards, and filled with compressed straw. The other half was open, and contained a big farm wagon. Between its wheels and the straw a number of clumsy ladders were tightly wedged. In the gable of the loft an open door showed a black interior.
“There will be straw up there,” I said to Wallace. “The cattle were given a fresh bed to-day, probably. Nobody will want to fetch straw on a Sunday. We’ll be quite safe.” And I went through the same argument as before.
Wallace was undecided for a moment, I believe. But, to tell the truth, I had spoken rather too sharply to him a little time before. My only excuse is that I was exceedingly worried. Rotten as he felt, he was bound to be nettled. “No,” he said; “I will go on.”
It was obvious that he was suffering from an attack of something akin to indigestion. I was unable, though, to make head or tail of his attack. When I pressed him for information, he told me he had swallowed some shaving-soap, mistaking it in the dark for chocolate. He had hardly any pain, but our pace decreased gradually to a crawl as we neared the crest of the spur of hills, where the path which I had used on my first escape branched off. Not having a torch, I missed it, but discovered my mistake about two hundred yards beyond. We had come out of the forest. Plowed fields on our right had given me the first hint of my error.
“We’ll have to turn back. I’ve missed the path,” I informed my friend.