Presently the path began to ascend, and he followed it upward. The climb became gradually steep and wearisome, and the track grew smaller, almost vanishing altogether among masses of loose stones, which had rolled down from the summits of the hills, and he had again to carry Charlie, who very strenuously objected to the contact of sharp flints against his dainty little feet. The boisterous wind now met him full-faced,--but, struggling against it, he finally reached a wide plateau, commanding a view of the surrounding country and the sea. Not a house was in sight;--all around him extended a chain of hills, like a fortress set against invading ocean,--and straight away before his eyes ocean itself rose and fell in a chaos of billowy blackness. What a sight it was! Here, from this point, he could take some measure and form some idea of the storm, which so far from abating as he had imagined it might, when passing through the protected seclusion of the valley he had just left, was evidently gathering itself together for a still fiercer onslaught. Breathless with his climbing exertions he stood watching the huge walls of water, built up almost solidly as it seemed, by one force and dashed down again by another,--it was as though great mountains lifted themselves over each other to peer at the sky and were driven back again to shapelessness and destruction. The spectacle was all the more grand and impressive to him, because where he now was he could not hear the full clamour of the rolling and retreating billows. The thunder of the surf was diminished to a sullen moan, which came along with the wind and clung to it like a concordant note in music, forming one sustained chord of wrath and desolation. Darkening steadily over the sea and densely over-spreading the whole sky, there were flying clouds of singular shape,--clouds tossed up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque human figures with threatening arms outstretched,--anon, to the filmly outlines of fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings and ravenous beaks,--or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two or three soared right over Helmsley's head with a plaintive cry. He turned to watch their graceful flight, and saw another phalanx of clouds coming up behind to meet and cope with those already hurrying in with the wind from the sea. The darkness of the sky was deepening every minute, and he began to feel a little uneasy. He realised that he had lost his way, and he looked on all sides for some glimpse of a main road, but could see none, and the path he had followed evidently terminated at the summit where he stood. To return to the valley he had left seemed futile, as it was only a way back to Minehead, which place he wished to avoid. There was a small sheep track winding down on the