But I never was a Rob Angus.  When my pupils practise what they call the high jump, two small boys hold a string aloft, and the bigger ones run at it gallantly until they reach it, when they stop meekly and creep beneath.  They will repeat this twenty times, and yet never, when they start for the string, seem to know where their courage will fail.  Nay, they will even order the small boys to hold the string higher.  I have smiled at this, but it was the same courage while the difficulty is far off that took me to the Loups.  At sight of them I turned away.

I prayed to God for a little of the mettle of other men, and He heard me, for with my eyes shut I seemed to see Margaret beckoning from across the abyss as if she had need of me.  Then I rose calmly and tested the chains, and crossed them on my breast.  Many have done it with the same danger, at which they laugh, but without that vision I should have held back.

I was now across the river, and so had left the chance of drowning behind, but I was farther from Thrums than v/hen I left the school-house, and this countryside was almost unknown to me.  The mist had begun to clear, so that I no longer wandered into fields; but though I kept to the roads, I could not tell that they led toward Thrums, and in my exhaustion I had often to stand still.  Then to make a new start in the mud was like pulling stakes out of the ground.  So long as the rain faced me I thought I could not be straying far; but after an hour I lost this guide, for a wind rose that blew it in all directions.

In another hour, when I should have been drawing near Thrums, I found myself in a wood, and here I think my distress was greatest; nor is this to be marvelled at, for instead of being near Thrums, I was listening to the monotonous roar of the sea.  I was too spent to reason, but I knew that I must have travelled direct east, and must be close to the German Ocean.  I remember putting my back against a tree and shutting my eyes, and listening to the lash of the waves against the beach, and hearing the faint toll of a bell, and wondering listlessly on what lighthouse it was ringing.  Doubtless I would have lain down to sleep forever had I not heard another sound near at hand.  It was the knock of a hammer on wood, and might have been a fisherman mending his boat.  The instinct of self-preservation carried me to it, and presently I was at a little house.  A man was standing in the rain, hammering new hinges to the door; and though I did not recognize him, I saw with bewilderment that the woman at his side was Nanny.

“It’s the dominie,” she cried, and her brother added: 

“Losh, sir, you hinna the look o’ a living man.”

“Nanny,” I said, in perplexity, “what are you doing here?”

“Whaur else should I be?” she asked.

I pressed my hands over my eyes, crying, “Where am I?”

Nanny shrank from me, but Sanders said, “Has the rain driven you gyte, man?  You’re in Thrums.”