"
"I will find him," I answered, "if he is anywhere within twenty miles of
Hartland."
She waved her hand to me in farewell. I rode on after she left me
towards the high promontory in front, the wildest and least-visited part
of North Devon. Torrents of rain had fallen during the night; the slimy
cart-ruts and cattle-tracks on the moor were brimming with water. It
was a lowering day. The clouds drifted low. Black peat-bogs filled the
hollows; grey stone homesteads, lonely and forbidding, stood out here
and there against the curved sky-line. Even the high road was uneven and
in places flooded. For an hour I passed hardly a soul. At last, near a
crossroad with a defaced finger-post, I descended from my machine, and
consulted my ordnance map, on which Mrs. Mallet had marked ominously,
with a cross of red rink, the exact position of the little fishing
hamlet where Hugo used to spend his holidays. I took the turning which
seemed to me most likely to lead to it; but the tracks were so confused,
and the run of the lanes so uncertain--let alone the map being some
years out of date--that I soon felt I had lost my bearings. By a little
wayside inn, half hidden in a deep combe, with bog on every side, I
descended and asked for a bottle of ginger-beer; for the day was hot and
close, in spite of the packed clouds.
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