Up the steep path that led through the crease in the hillside pushed the weary mother, drawing along her yet more weary child. Yet in the passion of her heart at the contrast her imagination drew she pressed forward fast till arrested by shortness of breath.
Thus in silence they continued to mount. It was a climb of four hundred feet. The woman looked neither to right nor to left. Wet, trailing brambles caught at her garments with their claws. As she passed under a stunted thorn it shuddered and sent down a shower. The flints in the way lay in beds of water; the grass was slippery with rain. Dank and rotting sting-nettles, oozy, but poisonous in their decay, struck at their knees as they mounted.
'O mother,' sobbed the girl, when the summit was attained, and the cruel east wind slashed in their faces, splashing them with ice-cold rain, 'O mother, I can go no farther.'
'How—where can we stay? Answer me that.'
'Why should we go on if we go nowheres?'
'No—we go nowhere, for we have nowhere to go to for shelter and food.'
'Let us go home.'
'The sea has taken it from us.'
'Let us shelter somewhere.'
'We must find first some one who will take us in.'