Now and again he would turn and beckon me, and he always went
on a little way before. As for me, partly because he beckoned, but more
because I felt prescient of a goal, I followed him.
No mountain path seems the same when you go up it and when you go down it.
This it was which rendered unfamiliar to me the shapes of the rocks and
the turnings of the gorge as I hurried, behind my companion. With every
passing moment, moreover, the light grew less secure, the scud thickened,
and as we rose towards the lower level of those clouds the mass of them
grew more even, until at last the path and some few yards of the emptiness
which sank away to our left was all one could discern. The mist was full
of a diffused moonlight, but it was dense. I wondered when we should
strike out of the gorge and begin to find the upland grasses that lead
toward the highest summits of those hills, for thither I was sure were we
bound.
Soon I began to recognize that easier trend in the rock wall, those
increasing and flattened gullies which mark the higher slope. Here and
there an unmelted patch of snow appeared, grass could be seen, and at last
we were upon the roll of the high land where it runs up steeply to the
ridge of the chain. Moss and the sponging of moisture in the turf were
beneath our feet, the path disappeared, and our climb got steeper and
steeper; and still the little man went on before, pressing eagerly and
breasting the hill.
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