I rose and plunged on again; again stumbled.

Then I found that I was treading level earth.
And--was it water I saw before me, below me?
or some mirage of the sky?
Neither; and I gripped my fellow's arm, as he came abreast of me, and stopped him sharply.

Below us in the middle of a steep hollow, a pit in the hill-side, a light shone out through some aperture and quivered on the mist, like the pale lamp of a moorland hobgoblin.

It made itself visible, displaying nothing else; a wisp of light in the bottom of a black bowl.

Yet my spirits rose with a great bound at sight of it; for I knew that I had stumbled on the place I sought.
In the common run of things I should have weighed my next step carefully, and gone about it slowly.