unsaddled his horse, hobbled him, and turned him out to feed. The grass
was beginning to seed, so that though it was none too plentiful, what
there was of it made excellent feed.

He lit his fire, made himself some tea, ate his cold mutton and biscuits,
and lit his pipe, exactly as he had done twenty years before. There was
the clear starlit sky, the rushing river, and the stunted trees on the
mountain-side; the woodhens cried, and the "more-pork" hooted out her two
monotonous notes exactly as they had done years since; one moment, and
time had so flown backwards that youth came bounding back to him with the
return of his youth's surroundings; the next, and the intervening twenty
years--most of them grim ones--rose up mockingly before him, and the
buoyancy of hope yielded to the despondency of admitted failure. By and
by buoyancy reasserted itself, and, soothed by the peace and beauty of
the night, he wrapped himself up in his blanket and dropped off into a
dreamless slumber.

Next morning, _i.e_. December 3, he rose soon after dawn, bathed in a
backwater of the river, got his breakfast, found his horse on the river-
bed, and started as soon as he had duly packed and loaded. He had now to
cross streams of the river and recross them more often than on the
preceding day, and this, though his horse took well to the water,
required care; for he was anxious not to wet his saddle-bags, and it was
only by crossing at the wide, smooth, water above a rapid, and by picking
places where the river ran in two or three streams, that he could find
fords where his practised eye told him that the water would not be above
his horse's belly--for the river was of great volume. Fortunately, there
had been a late fall of snow on the higher ranges, and the river was, for
the summer season, low.