BY ALICE KING. CHAPTER III. I made my way forward as quickly as I could, endeavouring, as I went, to make believe in my own mind that I was not much frightened, and did not very much dislike the whole situation—in fact, that it was rather an amusing and interesting one. But, after all, it was an extremely poor, thin make-belief indeed. The darkness grew thicker and thicker, the outlines of surrounding objects more and more indistinct; the wind rose higher and higher, and went sweeping by with a wild, dreary wail; the rain began to stream down as if a couple of rivers or more were being emptied from the sky on to the earth. I had brought no waterproof with me, I had only on a mantle of light summer cloth, and, as well may be supposed, I was soon enjoying the comfortable certainty that I was getting wet through as rapidly as I could. Yes, there was no denying it; it would decidedly be better to be in bed than here, even if I was expecting next morning the arrival of the ugliest ogre uncle that ever appeared in a fairy tale. I felt a most real and lively inclination to sit down and cry; but as there were some small shreds of heroism still hanging about me, I did not do it—I persevered onward, instead. Things were, however, becoming most uncompromisingly worse and worse. Hitherto there had been at the side of the road fences of some kind, the dim outlines of which had been, in a certain degree, a guide to me; but now I had got out on to an open common, where there was nothing round me save an expanse of what seemed immeasurable darkness, and where the wind and the rain beat upon me more violently and pitilessly than ever. I soon became aware, too, of another very unpleasant fact: I had evidently got off the road, for I could feel the damp, spongy-ground of the common underneath my feet. I tried to find my way back to it, but all in vain; I seemed only to get into wetter and less solid ground.