"Ahoy! Where are you?" he hailed again.
"Where are you?" came the voice.
"Hang it all," said Dacres dejectedly. "It's only an echo. I am merely wasting precious breath. If only there were a breeze I could keep a fairly straight course. Luck's quite out this trip."
Striking a match and glancing at his watch Dacres discovered that it was a quarter to ten.
"No use stopping here," he decided. "I'll plug away and trust to find another path. Wish I'd accepted that fellow's offer and got him to pilot me through this wilderness. That's the result of being so beastly independent."
On and on he went, dodging between the thick masses of furze. An hour later he had a shrewd suspicion that he was describing a large circle, for one peculiar-shaped tree struck him as being familiar; yet no longed-for path rewarded his perseverance.
"Hurrah!" he exclaimed as a tiny speck of light leapt up at some distance ahead of him. "Now there's a chance of finding out where I am."
Recklessly he plunged through the undergrowth, his eyes fixed upon the friendly gleam that came from the midst of a deep shadow. Suddenly the light vanished, but the shadow resolved itself into a dense clump of trees extending right and left like a huge wall till lost in the night mist.
Now he could hear voices: men talking rapidly and earnestly, while the clatter of a metal object falling upon hard ground raised a sharp reproof.
"Midnight motor repairs," thought Dacres. "A broken-down car, perhaps. Then, these trees are by the side of the high road. Ha!"