I had heard of how one may steer oneself by
observation of the stars, but my quiet English life had not taught me
how such things were done, and had I known I could scarcely have
profited by it, since the few stars which were visible peeped out here
and there in the rifts of the flying storm-clouds. I wandered on then,
wet and weary, trusting to fortune, but always blundering deeper and
deeper into this horrible bog, until I began to think that my first
night in France was destined also to be my last, and that the heir of
the de Lavals was destined to perish of cold and misery in the depths of
this obscene morass.
I must have toiled for many miles in this dreary fashion, sometimes
coming upon shallower mud and sometimes upon deeper, but never making my
way on to the dry, when I perceived through the gloom something which
turned my heart even heavier than it had been before. This was a
curious clump of some whitish shrub--cotton-grass of a flowering
variety--which glimmered suddenly before me in the darkness. Now, an
hour earlier I had passed just such a square-headed, whitish clump; so
that I was confirmed in the opinion which I had already begun to form,
that I was wandering in a circle.
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