ation marked out;
nevertheless he was going nowhere.

He hastened without an object--a fugitive before Fate.

To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an animal--he
did both. As the slopes of Portland face southward, there was scarcely
any snow on the path; the intensity of cold had, however, frozen that
snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. The child freed himself
of it. His man's jacket, which was too big for him, complicated matters,
and got in his way. Now and then on an overhanging crag or in a
declivity he came upon a little ice, which caused him to slip down.
Then, after hanging some moments over the precipice, he would catch
hold of a dry branch or projecting stone. Once he came on a vein of
slate, which suddenly gave way under him, letting him down with it.
Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a
tile on a roof; he rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of
grass which he clutched at the right moment saved him. He was as mute in
sight of the abyss as he had been in sight of the men; he gathered
himself up and re-ascended silently. The slope was steep; so he had to
tack in ascending. The precipice grew in the darkness; the vertical rock
had no ending. It receded before the child in the distance of its
height. As the child ascended, so seemed the summit to ascend. While he
clambered he looked up at the dark entablature placed like a barrier
between heaven and him. At last he reached the top.

He jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he rose from the
precipice.

Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. He felt in his
face that bite of the night, the north wind. The bitter north-wester was
blowing; he tightened his rough sailor's jacket about his chest.

It was a good coat, called in ship language a sou-'wester, because that
sort of stuff allows little of the south-westerly rain to penetrate.

The child, having gained the tableland, stopped, placed his feet firmly
on the frozen ground, and looked about him.

Behind him was the sea; in front the land; above, the sky--but a sky
without stars; an opaque mist masked the zenith.

On reaching the summit of the rocky wall he found himself turned towards
the land, and looked at it attentively. It lay before him as far as the
sky-line, flat, frozen, and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather
shivered in the wind. No roads were visible--nothing, not even a
shepherd's cot. He