Several commanding elevations were in sight, some wooded, some bare.  We chose the nearest, to observe the sunset, and concurred in thinking it unlike English sunsets, though not so very unlike the sunset we had taken for sunrise on board the Priscilla.  A tumbled, dark and light green country of swelling forest-land and slopes of meadow ran to the West, and the West from flaming yellow burned down to smoky crimson across it.  Temple bade—­me ‘catch the disc—­that was English enough.’  A glance at the sun’s disc confirmed the truth of his observation.  Gazing on the outline of the orb, one might have fancied oneself in England.  Yet the moment it had sunk under the hill this feeling of ours vanished with it.  The coloured clouds drew me ages away from the recollection of home.

A tower on a distant hill, white among pines, led us to suppose that Sarkeld must lie somewhere beneath it.  We therefore descended straight toward the tower, instead of returning to the road, and struck confidently into a rugged path.  Recent events had given me the assurance that in my search for my father I was subject to a special governing direction.  I had aimed at the Bench—­missed it—­been shipped across sea and precipitated into the arms of friends who had seen him and could tell me I was on his actual track, only blindly, and no longer blindly now.

‘Follow the path,’ I said, when Temple wanted to have a consultation.

‘So we did in the London fog!’ said he, with some gloom.

But my retort:  ‘Hasn’t it brought us here?’ was a silencer.

Dark night came on.  Every height stood for a ruin in our eyes, every dip an abyss.  It grew bewilderingly dark, but the path did not forsake us, and we expected, at half-hour intervals, to perceive the lights of Sarkeld, soon to be thundering at one of the inns for admission and supper.  I could hear Temple rehearsing his German vocabulary, ’Brod, butter, wasser, fleisch, bett,’ as we stumbled along.  Then it fell to ‘Brod, wasser, bett,’ and then, ‘Bett’ by itself, his confession of fatigue.  Our path had frequently the nature of a waterway, and was very fatiguing, more agreeable to mount than descend, for in mounting the knees and shins bore the brunt of it, and these sufferers are not such important servants of the footfarer as toes and ankles in danger of tripping and being turned.

I was walking on leveller ground, my head bent and eyes half-shut, when a flash of light in a brook at my feet caused me to look aloft.  The tower we had marked after sunset was close above us, shining in a light of torches.  We adopted the sensible explanation of this mysterious sight, but were rather in the grip of the superstitious absurd one, until we discerned a number of reddened men.

‘Robbers!’ exclaimed one of us.  Our common thought was, ’No; robbers would never meet on a height in that manner’; and we were emboldened to mount and request their help.