I had not the heart to try to arouse the poor child, as you may suppose; wherefore, disturbing her as little as I could, I gathered her in my arms, for after all her fine spirit she was but a feather of a thing, and carried her before me along the lane. It was an effort of despair, for the never-ending darkness revealed no glimpse of what I sought. Every now and then the wind brought a spatter of the expected rain; but this, when it came upon my lips, carried a kind of refreshment in it. I doggedly set my teeth and marched along with my warm burden, and I think the weight of responsibility that was in my arms, added to the one upon my heart, fostered a grim determination in me to succeed in my search at any cost. The lanes seemed interminable, and every one the same. All my limbs were one strange, numb ache; I had become so faint with hunger that I moved in a kind of delirium; and in the end every step I took became so mechanical a thing as to be an effort of the will without the co-operation of the senses. Heaven knows what the hour was when one of these lanes I had been eternally taking all night long ended in a partly-unhinged gate. My first instinct was to snatch an instant's rest upon it; but this I dared not do. I could never have set my paralysed limbs in motion again had I done so. Indeed it was but the presence of poor little Cynthia in my arms that prevented my sinking to the earth as I stood. But looking beyond the gate I could indistinctly define various dull masses that I believed to be the outline of haystacks or farm buildings. Brushing through the rickety gate with an accession of new strength that the idea had lent me, I had not proceeded many yards in the stubble-field beyond ere I knew that at last I had come to a farmstead. There was not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere, nor could I make out in the total darkness which was the house itself. Approaching nearer it grew plain that these were farm buildings. Considering, however, my exhausted condition, the lateness of the hour, and the probability that the house was some distance off, I decided to make the best of what lay before me. No sooner had I taken this resolve, than the moon, as if in recognition of it, showed itself suddenly for the first time that night from out of its wrack of rain clouds. By its aid and the smell issuing from within I was made aware that I stood before the entrance to a cow-hovel.