Making my way carefully across the plateau, for the ground was stiff with small holes and gullies and I had no wish to sprain my ankle, I began the descent of the opposite side.  The mist here was a good deal thinner, but night was coming on so rapidly that as far as seeing where I was going was concerned I was very little better off than I had been on the top of the hill.

Below me, away to the right, a blurred glimmer of light just made itself visible.  This I took to be Merivale village, on the Tavistock road; and not being anxious to trespass upon its simple hospitality, I sheered off slightly in the opposite direction.  At last, after about twenty minutes’ scrambling, I began to hear a faint trickle of running water, and a few more steps brought me to the bank of the Walkham.

I stood there for a little while in the darkness, feeling a kind of tired elation at my achievement.  My chances of escape might still be pretty thin, but I had at least reached a temporary shelter.  For five miles away to my left stretched the pleasantly fertile valley, and until I chose to come out of it all the warders on Dartmoor might hunt themselves black in the face without finding me.

I can’t say exactly how much farther I tramped that evening.  When one is stumbling along at night through an exceedingly ill-kept wood in a state of hunger, dampness, and exhaustion, one’s judgment of distance is apt to lose some of its finer accuracy.  I imagine, however, that I must have covered at least three more miles before my desire to lie down and sleep became too poignant to be any longer resisted.

I hunted about in the darkness until I discovered a small patch of fairly dry grass which had been more or less protected from the rain by an overhanging rock.  I might perhaps have done better, but I was too tired to bother.  I just dropped peacefully down where I stood, and in spite of my bruises and my soaked clothes I don’t think I had been two minutes on the ground before I was fast asleep.

* * * * *

Tommy Morrison always used to say that only unintelligent people woke up feeling really well.  If he was right I must have been in a singularly brilliant mood when I again opened my eyes.

It was still fairly dark, with the raw, sour darkness of an early March morning, and all round me the invisible drip of the trees was as persistent as ever.  Very slowly and shakily I scrambled to my feet.  My head ached savagely, I was chilled to the core, and every part of my body felt as if it had been trampled on by a powerful and rather ill-tempered mule.

I was hungry too—­Lord, how hungry I was!  Breakfast in the prison is not exactly an appetizing meal, but at that moment the memory of its thin gruel and greasy cocoa and bread seemed to me beautiful beyond words.

I looked round rather forlornly.  As an unpromising field for foraging in, a Dartmoor wood on a dark March morning takes a lot of beating.  It is true that there was plenty of water—­the whole ground and air reeked with it—­but water, even in unlimited quantities, is a poor basis for prolonged exertion.