am not yet certain which,—in some unaccountable manner my feet found themselves again in the path.
Now, then, I would carry out my original intention, and I turned straight about. For a while the path held clear. Then it was blocked by a big tree that had toppled into it lengthwise. I must go round the obstruction, and pick up the trail at the other end. But the trail would not be picked up. It had faded out or run into the ground. Finally, when I was just on the point of owning myself beaten, my eyes all at once fell upon it, running along before me. A second experience of the same kind set me thinking how long it would take to go a mile or two at this rate (it was already half past four o'clock), even if I did not in the end lose my way altogether. But I kept on till I was stopped, not by a single windfall, but by a tangle of half a dozen. This time I hunted for a continuation of the path on the further side till I was out of patience, and then determined to be done with the foolish business, and go back by the way I had come. A very sensible resolve, but when I came to put it into execution it
turned out to be too late. The path was lost entirely. I must fall back upon the sun; and if the truth is to be told, I commenced feeling slightly uncomfortable. The bushes were wet; my clothing was drenched; I had neither compass nor matches; it certainly would be anything but agreeable to spend the night in the forest.
Happily there was, for the present, no great danger of matters coming to such a pass. If the sun would only shine for half an hour longer I could reach the brook (I could probably reach it without the sun), and even if I missed the bridge I could follow the stream out of the woods before dark. I was not frightened, but I was beginning to tremble lest I should be. The loss of the path was in itself little to worry about. But what if I should lose my wits also, as many a man had done in circumstances no worse, and with consequences most disastrous? Unpleasant stories came into my head, and I remember repeating to myself more than once (candor is better than felicity of phrase), "Be careful, now; don't get rattled!" Then, having thus
pulled myself together, as an Englishman would say, I faced the sun and began "stepping westward," though with no thought of Wordsworth's poem. A spectator might have suspected that if I was not "rattled," I was at least not far from it. "Now who is this," he might have queried,
"whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week?"
Meanwhile I was, of course, on the lookout for any signs of the missing path, and after a time I descried in the distance, on one side, what looked like a patch of bushes growing in the midst of the forest. I made for it, and, as I expected, found myself once more on the trail. This time I held it, reached the bridge, crossed it, and, still keeping up my pace, was presently out in the sunshine of the old farm, startling a brood of young partridges on the way. Happy birds! They were never afraid of passing a night in the woods. A most absurd notion! But man, as he is the strongest of all animals, so is he also the weakest and most defenseless.
This last reflection is an afterthought, I freely acknowledge. At the moment I was
taken up with the peacefulness of the pastoral scene into which I had so happily emerged, and was in no mood to envy anybody. How bright and cheerful the ragworts and buttercups looked, and what sweet and homelike music the robin made, singing from one of the apple-trees! The cool north wind wafted the spicy odor of the cinnamon roses to my nostrils; but—alas for the prosaic fact!—the same cool wind struck through my saturated garments, bidding me move on. The pessimistic preacher was right when he said, "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." I wonder whether he was ever bewildered in a dark wood. From boyhood I have loved the forest, with its silence, its shadows, and its deep isolation, but for the present I had had my fill of such mercies.
As I came out upon the highway, it occurred to me what Emerson says of Thoreau,—that "he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, and therefore never willingly walked in the road." My own taste, I was obliged to admit, was somewhat less fastidious. Indeed, my