The third day found him up on the ragged moors, steering north. The exercise and strong salt wind had driven the sad humours from him, and the affairs of life were beginning to resume their right perspective; so much so that when, about noon, a sore heel began abruptly to make itself felt (in the irrational way sore heels have), Selby sat down and pulled out his map. The day before yesterday he would have pushed on doggedly, almost welcoming the counter-irritant of physical discomfort. To-day, however, he accepted the inevitable and searched the map for some neighbouring village where he could rest a day or so until the chafed foot was healed. After a while he turned east, and, leaving the high moorland, discerned the smoke of chimneys among some trees in the valley. He descended a steep road that seemed to lead in the right direction, and presently caught a glimpse of a square church tower among some elms; later on the breeze bore the faint cawing of rooks up the hillside. A stream divided the valley: the few cottages clustered on the opposite side huddled close together as if reluctant to venture far beyond the shadow of the grey church. The green of the hillside behind them was gashed in one place by an old quarry; but the work had long been abandoned, and Nature had already begun to repair the red scar with impatient furz and whinberry. So much Selby took in as he descended past the grey church and cawing rooks; once at the bottom and across the quaint, square-arched bridge, he found there was a small inn amongst the huddled cottages, where they would receive him for a night or two. He lunched, did what he could to the blistered heel with a darning needle and worsted (after the fashion of blistered sailormen), and took a light siesta in the lavender-smelling bedroom under the roof until it was time for tea. Tea over, he lit a pipe, borrowed his host’s little 9 ft. trout rod that hung in the passage, and limped down to the meadows skirting the stream beyond the village. The light occupation gave him something to think about; and, held by the peace of running water, he lingered by the stream till evening. Then something of his old sadness came back with the dimpsey light,—a gentle melancholy that only resembled sorrow "as the mist resembles the rain." He wanted his supper, too, and so walked slowly back to the village with the rod on his shoulder. The inn-keeper met him at the door: "Well done, sir! Well done! Yu’m a fisherman, for sure! Missus, she fry ’un for supper for ’ee now.... Yes, ’tis nice li’l rod—cut un meself: li’l hickory rod, ’tis.... Where did ’ee have that half-pounder, sir? There’s many a good fish tu that li’l pool...."