might have found my road, in spite of all the spread of water, and the
glaze of moonshine; but that, as I followed sound (far from hedge or
causeway), fog (like a chestnut-tree in blossom, touched with moonlight)
met me. Now fog is a thing that I understand, and can do with well
enough, where I know the country; but here I had never been before. It
was nothing to our Exmoor fogs; not to be compared with them; and all
the time one could see the moon; which we cannot do in our fogs; nor
even the sun, for a week together. Yet the gleam of water always makes
the fog more difficult: like a curtain on a mirror; none can tell the
boundaries.

And here we had broad-water patches, in and out, inlaid on land, like
mother-of-pearl in brown Shittim wood. To a wild duck, born and bred
there, it would almost be a puzzle to find her own nest amongst us; what
chance then had I and Kickums, both unused to marsh and mere? Each time
when we thought that we must be right, now at last, by track or passage,
and approaching the conflict, with the sounds of it waxing nearer,
suddenly a break of water would be laid before us, with the moon looking
mildly over it, and the northern lights behind us, dancing down the
lines of fog.

It was an awful thing, I say (and to this day I remember it), to hear
the sounds of raging fight, and the yells of raving slayers, and the
howls of poor men stricken hard, and shattered from wrath to wailing;
then suddenly the dead low hush, as of a soul departing, and spirits
kneeling over it. Through the vapour of the earth, and white breath of
the water, and beneath the pale round moon (bowing as the drift went
by), all this rush and pause of fear passed or lingered on my path.

At last, when I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy
banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh
of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the
other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and
gazed through the fog very steadfastly. Therefore I encouraged him with
a soft and genial whistle, and Kickums did his best to tempt him with a
snort of inquiry. However, nothing would suit that nag, except to enjoy
his new freedom; and he capered away with his tail set on high, and the
stirrup-irons clashing under him. Therefore, as he might know the way,
and appeared to have been in the battle, we followed him very carefully;
and he led us to a little hamlet, cal