I was seized by an indescribable fear; these sounds sent a chill through me, and my terror was increased by the darkness between the trees, where all objects appeared distorted, moving and alive, stretching forth thousands of hands and arms after the stray wanderer. All the fairy tales of my childhood were conjured up before my startled imagination, and appeared to be realized in the forms which surrounded me; I saw the whole forest filled with trolls, elves, and sporting dwarfs. In thoughtless and breathless fear I rushed forward to avoid this host of demons, but while flying thus still more frightful and distorted shapes appeared,—and I fancied I felt their hands clutching me. Suddenly I heard the heavy tread of some one, who moved over the crackling branches of the underwood. I saw, or fancied I saw, a dark shape, which approached me with a pair of eyes shining like glowing stars. My hair stood on an end; I believed my fate was inevitably sealed, and shouted almost unconsciously as if to give myself new courage:
A PAIR OF EYES SHINING LIKE STARS.
"If there's anybody there, tell me the way to Stubdale!" A deep growl was the answer I received, and the bear, for such it was, walked quickly away in the same direction whence he had come. I stood for some time and listened to his heavy steps and the crackling of the branches under his feet. I mumbled to myself: "I wish it was daylight and that I had a gun with me, and you should have had a bullet, Master Bruin, for frightening me thus!"
With this wish and childish threat all fear and thoughts of danger vanished, and I walked on again quite composed, on the soft mossy ground.
When after considerable trouble I had forced my way through the chaos of fallen trees, which the wind had torn up in this exposed wild region, and had ascended the other steep hillside, I had still a good distance to walk across an open wooded heath.
On the outskirt of this wood trickled a small brook, where the alder and the pine trees again sought to maintain their place, and on a small plot on the slope on the other side of a brook burned a great log-fire, which threw its red light far in between the trees. In front of the fire sat a dark figure, which, on account of its position between me and the blazing fire, appeared to me to be of supernatural proportions. The old stories about robbers and thieves in this forest came suddenly back to me, and I was on the point of running away when my eyes caught sight of a hut, made out of fir branches, close to the fire, and two other men, who sat outside it, and the many axes, which were fixed into the stump of a felled tree, and it became evident to me that they were wood-cutters.