"How on earth are you going to find the place where we turn off, Mr. Fitzgibbon?" Ralph asked. "We shall find it easy enough sir. The path regularly forks, and there is a pile of stones at the junction, which makes as good a guide as you can want on a dark night. We can't miss that even on a night like this." Ralph had struck a light with his flint and steel, and looked at his watch at the point where they turned off from the road, and he did the same thing two or three times as they went along. "It's an hour and twenty minutes since we turned off, Mr. Fitzgibbon. Even allowing for our stoppages when we have got off the path, we ought to be near the turning now." "Yes, I fancy we are not far off now, sir. I can feel that we are rising more sharply, and there is a rise in the last hundred yards or so before we reach the place where the road forks. We had better go a little more slowly now, sir." Another five minutes there was a stumble and a fall in front of Ralph. "Halt!" he exclaimed sharply. "What is it, Mr. Fitzgibbon?" "I have fallen over the pile of stones," the officer said, "and hurt myself confoundedly." "Don't you think we had better halt till daylight?" "I think we can keep on, sir. The nearer we get there the better; and if we should miss the path we can halt then and wait till daybreak." "Well, we can do that," Ralph agreed. "I will go on ahead, sir, twenty or thirty yards at a time and then speak, and you can bring the men on to me, then I will go on again. It will be slow work, but I can keep the path better if I go at my own pace." Ralph agreed, and they proceeded in this manner for some time. "I don't think we are on the track now," Ralph said at last. "Oh, yes, we are," the officer replied confidently. Ralph stooped and felt the ground. "The grass is very short," he observed, "but it is grass." The officer followed his example. "Oh, it is only a track now," he said. "Just a footpath, and the grass is not worn off. I am convinced we are right." "Well," Ralph said, "just go a little way to the right and left, and see if the grass gets longer. It seems to me all the same." The officer did so, and was obliged to own that he could not perceive any difference. Ralph now spread his men out in a line and directed them to feel on the ground to see if they could discover the track. They failed to do so, and Ralph then ordered them together again. "We will halt here, sergeant, till daylight. It's no use groping about in the dark. For anything we know we may be going exactly in the wrong direction. The men can of course sit down if they like; and they may as well eat a piece of bread and try their water-bottles. But tell them not to eat more than half their ration. We may be longer before we get out of this than we expect."