Mr. Sponge,
however, knew no points, and was quite at sea; indeed, even if he had, they
would have been of little use, for a fitful and frequently obscured moon
threw such bewildering lights and shades around, that a native would have
had some difficulty in recognizing the country. The frost grew more
intense, the stars shone clear and bright, and the cold took our friend by
the nape of the neck, shooting across his shoulder-blades and right down
his back. Mr. Sponge wished and wished he was anywhere but where he
was--flattening his nose against the coffee-room window of the Bantam,
tooling in a hansom as hard as he could go, squaring along Oxford Street
criticizing horses--nay, he wouldn't care to be undergoing Gustavus James
himself--anything, rather than rambling about a strange country in a cold
winter's night, with nothing but the hooting of owls and the occasional
bark of shepherds' dogs to enliven his solitude. The houses were few and
far between. The lights in the cottages had long been extinguished, and the
occupiers of such of the farmhouses as would come to his knocks were gruff
in their answers, and short in their directions.
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