If I escape with no worse injury than this, I may consider myself
well off. But no such good fortune is reserved for me. In his
struggles to rise, before I have completely extricated myself
from him, the pony kicks me; and, as my ill-luck will have it,
his hoof strikes just where the poisoned spear struck me in the
past days of my service in India. The old wound opens again--and
there I lie bleeding on the barren Shetland moor!

This time my strength has not been exhausted in attempting to
breast the current of a swift-flowing river with a drowning woman
to support. I preserve my senses; and I am able to give the
necessary directions for bandaging the wound with the best
materials which we have at our disposal. To mount my pony again
is simply out of the question. I must remain where I am, with my
traveling companion to look after me; and the guide must trust
his pony to discover the nearest place of shelter to which I can
be removed.

Before he abandons us on the moor, the man (at my suggestion)
takes our " bearings," as correctly as he can by the help of my
pocket-compass. This done, he disappears in the mist, with the
bridle hanging loose, and the pony's nose to the ground, as
before. I am left, under my young friend's care, with a cloak to
lie on, and a saddle for a pillow. Our ponies composedly help
themselves to such grass as they can find on the moor; keeping
always near us as companionably as if they were a couple of dogs.
In this position we wait events, while the dripping mist hangs
thicker than ever all round us.

The slow minutes follow each other wearily in the majestic
silence of the moor. We neither of us acknowledge it in words,
but we both feel that hours may pass before the guide discovers
us again. The penetrating damp slowly strengthens its clammy hold
on me. My companion's pocket-flask of sherry has about a
teaspoonful of wine left in the bottom of it. We look at one
another--having nothing else to look at in the present state of
the weather--and we try to make the best of it. So the slow
minutes follow each other, until our watches tell us that forty
minutes have elapsed since the guide and his pony vanished from
our view.

My friend suggests that we may as well try what our voices can do
toward proclaiming our situation to any living creature who may,
by the barest possibility, be within hearing of us. I leave him
to try the experiment, having no strength to spare for vocal
efforts of any sort. My companion shouts at the highest pitch of
his voice. Silence follows his first attempt. He tries again;
and, this time, an answering hail reaches us faintly through the
white fog. A fellow-creature of some sort, guide or stranger, is
near us--help is coming at last!

An interval passes; and voices reach our ears--the voices of two
men. Then the shadowy appearance of the two becomes visible in
the mist. Then the guide advances near enough to be identified.
He is followed by a sturdy fellow in a composite dress, which
presents him under the double aspect of a groom and a gardener.
The guide speaks a few words of rough sympathy. The composite man
stands by impenetrably silent; the sight of a disabled stranger
fails entirely either to surprise or to interest the
gardener-groom.

After a little private consultation, the two men decide to cross
their hands, and thus make a seat for me between them. My arms
rest on their shoulders; and so they carry me off. My friend
trudges behind them, with the saddle and the cloak. The ponies
caper and kick, in unrestrained enjoyment of their freedom; and
sometimes follow, sometimes precede us, as the humor of the
moment inclines them. I am, fortunately for my bearers, a light
weight. After twice resting, they stop altogether, and set me
down on the driest place they can find. I look eagerly through
the mist for some signs of a dwelling-house--and I see nothing
but a little shelving beach, and a sheet of dark water beyond.
Where are we?

The gardener-groom vanishes, and appears again on the water,
looming large in a boat. I am laid down in the bottom of the
boat, with my saddle-pillow; and we shove off, leaving the ponies
to the desolate freedom of the moor. They will pick up plenty to
eat (the guide says); and when night comes on they will find
their own way to shelter in a village hard by. The last I see of
the hardy little creatures they are taking a drink of water, side
by side, and biting each other sportively in higher spirits than
ever!

Slowly we float over the dark water--not a river, as I had at
first supposed, but a lake--until we reach the shores of a little
island; a flat, lonely, barren patch of ground. I am carried
along a rough pathway made of great flat stones, until we reach
the firmer earth, and discover a human dwelling-place at last. It
is a long, low house of one story high; forming (as well as I can
see) three sides of a square. The door stands hospitably open.
The hall within is bare and cold and dreary. The men open an
inner door, and we enter a long corridor, comfortably warmed by a
peat fire. On one wall I notice the closed oaken doors of rooms;
on the other, rows on rows of well-filled book-shelves meet my
eye. Advancing to the end of the first passage, we turn at right
angles into a second. Here a door is opened at last: I find
myself in a spacious room, completely and tastefully furnished,
having two beds in it, and a large fire burning in the grate. The


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