For the first time in the day, I bethought myself of smoking. I had out pipe and tobacco, filled my pipe, and struck a match. It flamed and died. I realized in an instant what a tragedy my carelessness had caused.
That was my last match.
I would certainly have cursed myself in the limited number of languages at my command, had not something I had seen in that moment’s flare of the match caused me to catch my breath.
The little recess of the rocks where I had taken refuge was filled with bracken and some coarse grass. The brief light had shown me that at the rear of the cave, if I may call it so, the sparser growth had been crushed down, thoroughly flattened—and the impress was that of a human form. Someone had used this place of late as his sleeping quarters!
I must have sat there stunned for several minutes before I stirred, or even began to think. When I had gathered my wits, it was not hard determining to get out of the place at once. Was this sleeper the man who had shed Cosgrove’s blood? For all that had been discovered, he might be. But whoever he was, I had no wish to encounter him alone, and he might at that very moment be hurrying this way to escape the rain.
The rain, to be sure, had almost ceased, a fact which did not alter my determination to be quit of the ledge with all speed. Half a minute later I was out of the shelter and clambering up the bank, with my face set toward Mynydd Tarw’s gorsy slopes. And now I watched the curving limits of the hills with half-apprehensive keenness, expecting at any moment to see the black dot of the unknown head rise into sight.
The shower had all but ceased; through a fine spray of rain the sun came glinting. I looked across the Vale, over Great Rhos. Ahead of me among the waste of hills beyond Aidenn Forest the land was black with storm for leagues, save where one great monument of light rested thirty miles away on Pen Plinlimon-fawr. On that bleak mountain-top the zone of splendour shone like a spot of hell touched by some ray of heaven.
I had the impulse then to look the opposite way. Yes, as I had surmised, to the south-east the meadows of Herefordshire were steeped in sun. And through the gauzy air with its wandering vapour-drops I saw a rainbow’s glittering bridge from wooded slope to wooded slope across the mown hayfields, an arch beneath which the distant Malvern Hills lifted their profile against the sky.
I remembered then the great freedom and elation I had felt when on the uplands only two days ago, and wished that among these wonders that seemed spread for my eyes alone I might regain that long ebullient rapture. But I could not. Why could I not?
There I was with pipe and tobacco, perishing for a match!