She was silent and strode forward, still pulling and biting at the knots. "Come, answer me, why did you run away?" "I was in a passion, slave-driver! Why do you say to me, 'Come, Urith?' I do not come, I go--driven forward by you." "In a passion! What about?" "My mother and Uncle Solomon worried me." "What about?" "That I will not tell you, though you beat me with your long stick." "You know well enough, little owl, that I will not strike you." "I know nothing, save that you are a bully." "What! because I will not leave you on the moor to perish? Be reasonable, Urith. I am doing for you the best I can. I could not suffer you to remain uncared for on this waste. That would indeed be inhuman. Why, at sea it is infamy for a sailor to leave a wrecked vessel uncared for if he sights it." There was reason in what he said. That she admitted in her heart. In her heart, also, she was constrained to allow that the difficult situation into which she had fallen was due to her own conduct. Anthony Cleverdon was behaving towards her in the only way in which a generous lad could behave towards one found astray in the wilderness. But she was angry with him because he was too dull to see that there were difficulties in the way in which he proposed to restore her to her home, difficulties which she could not, in delicacy, express. Anthony did not press her to speak further. He led the way now, and she followed; whereas, at first, she had preceded, in her angry humour, and to maintain the notion that she was being driven against her will. Occasionally he turned to see that she had not run away. She was chary of speech, out of humour, partly with him--chiefly with herself. The way led from one granite tor to another, through all the intricacies of fissured bog, till at length the two travellers reached a sensible depression or slope of the land, and now the water, instead of lying stagnant in the clefts, began to run, and presently in a thousand rills filtered down a basin of turf towards a bottom, where they united in a river-head. The aspect of the country at once changed. It was as when a fever-patient passes from incoherent and inarticulate mutterings into connected syllables, and then to clearly distinct sentences. The wandering veins and seams in the bog had found direction and drift for their contents, acquired a cant down which the water ran, and valley, stream, and river were the definite result. "Now," said Anthony, "our course is clear; we have but to follow the water." "How far?" "About four miles." "And then?" "Then I will get my horse, and we shall have a direct course before us." "What, the high road to Tavistock?" "No. You shall not go that way." "By what way then will you take me?" "By the Lyke-Way." CHAPTER II. THE LYKE-WAY.