For now there was nothing but stooping and crawling and slouching
behind hillocks, up peat-hags, and through marshy swamps; while the heat
produced by all this painful toil was liable to a sudden chill whenever
a halt was called to enable Roderick to writhe his prostrate figure up
to the top of some slight eminence, where, raising his head inch by
inch, he once more informed himself of the whereabouts of the deer.
There seemed to be no end to this snake-like squirming along the ground
and creeping behind rocks and hillocks; in fact, they were now in a
quite different tract of country from that in which they had first
caught sight of the stags--a much more wild and sombre landscape was
this, with precipitous black crags overhanging a sullen and solitary
loch that had not a bush or a tree along its lifeless shores. As for
Lionel, he fought along without repining. His arms were soaking wet up
to the elbows; his legs were in a like condition from the knee downward.
Then he was damp with perspiration; while ever and anon, when he had to
lie prone in the moist grass, or crouch like a frog behind a rock, the
cold wind from the hills sent a shiver down his spine or seemed to
strike like an icy dagger through his chest.
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