He was standing close to a beautifully shaped ilex, and for a few moments he could not make out the great spiral-barked chestnut, till, just as he began to fancy that he had lost his way at once, he caught sight of its glossy bronzed leaves behind the greyish green ilex.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Now then, here’s luck.”
It was a bitter fight with grim giant despair as the boy tramped on, and time after time, faint with hunger, suffering from misery, he was about to throw himself down upon the earth, utterly broken in spirit, but he fought on bravely.
“I never saw such a country!” he muttered. “There ought to be plenty of towns and villages and people, but it’s all desert and stones and scrubby trees. Any one would think that you couldn’t walk anywhere without finding something to eat, and there’s nothing but the goats and pigs, and as soon as they catch sight of you away they go.”
Over and over again he climbed hillsides to reach spots where he could look down, in the full expectation of seeing some village or cluster of huts. But it was all the same, there was nothing to be seen; till, growing alarmed lest he should find that he had lost touch with his landmarks, he began to retrace his steps in utter despair, but only to drop down on his knees at last and bury his face in his hands, to give way to the emotion that for a few moments he could not master.
“There,” he muttered, recovering himself, “I could not help it, but there was no one to see. Just like a silly great gal. It is being hungry, I suppose, and weak with my wound; and, my word, it does sting! But there’s some one at last!”
The boy looked sharply round.
“Why, you idgit!” he gasped, “you’ve lost him again. No, it’s all right,” he cried, and he started off at a trot in the direction of a short, plump-looking figure in rusty black, who, bent of head and book in hand, was slowly descending a slope away to his right.