that it was vitally important that I pick the right one…that only one could be traversed safely…that the
other two would lead me into the power of those lurking things.
The pit began to contract. I felt its bottom lifting beneath my feet. The pit was thrusting me out! I leaped
upon the path at my right, and began to walk slowly along it. Then involuntarily I began to run, faster and
faster along it, toward the woods. As I drew nearer I saw that the path pierced the woods straight as an
arrow flight, and that it was about three feet wide and bordered closely by the trees, and that it vanished
in the dim green distance. Faster and faster I ran. Now I had entered the woods, and the unseen things
were gathering among the trees that bordered the path, thronging the borders, rushing silently from all the
wood. What those things were, what they would do to me if they caught me I did not know…I only knew
that nothing that I could imagine of agony could equal what I would experience if they did catch me.