I stumbled on as well as I could through the black wood and the drenching rain, and then I must have slipped, for I found myself swinging from my father's supporting arm. He tried to set me on my feet again, but I felt faint, and the little strength had quite ebbed from my limbs; and my father with boisterous tenderness stooped and lifted me on to his back, and with a "Courage, Tommy!" strode on with redoubled speed. I hung my dripping arms down his shoulders, taking care not to press them against his throat and hinder his breathing, for I had had experience in this kind of travel. And I laid my streaming cheek upon his head, and felt the jogging motion of his walk lull me to a disturbed kind of half sleep, full of waking visions and drowsy dreams, where great blazing fires and the smell of sizzling and delicious foods mingled with alarms and pattering feet and gripping hands thrust suddenly out of the dark. At last I must have yielded to my fatigue and slept soundly, while the rain beat unheeded upon my face, for I woke to a real fire that fumed up smokily with sputtering crackles and fitful flames, bright enough to show that all around was dark. I couldn't see my father, but I heard him moving behind me, and a sudden light told me that he had lit our travelling lantern, for yellow swinging beams played round our shelter as he hung the lantern from the roof. I looked about me sleepily. Evidently we were in some sort of hut, though where in the whole of England I hadn't the faintest notion. Outside the wind and rain were still at their old struggle, slashing and crying through the trees in great rushing gusts that grew out of nowhere and raced away again. My father seeing me move threw himself down beside me, and stripping off my sodden clothes began to arrange them round the fire. From his knapsack he pulled out a rug which he had managed to keep reasonably dry through the drenching tempest, and wrapped my naked body in its comforting folds, and the touch of its dry softness was bliss unspeakable after the soaking discomfort of the rain. I smiled up into his face with all my love, and for reward felt his arms about me, and his wet cheek pressed to mine, while he murmured, "That's my brave little boy!" So wonderful was my father that words like these were magical, and my ebbing courage flowed again. Then he took my hands between his own and chafed them vigorously back to life, and I don't think I cried at the exquisite pain as the blood flushed slowly back to my white finger-tips. And all the time he was talking in his rapid and thrilling way, making a story of the adventure we had passed through, and telling how we had baffled our pursuer at last.