Wanhope roused himself with a kindling eye. “That is very interesting, the movement in a circle of people who have lost their way. It has often been observed, but I don't know that it has ever been explained. Sometimes the circle is smaller, sometimes it is larger; but I believe it is always a circle.”
“Isn't it,” I queried, “like any other error in life? We go round and round; and commit the old sins over again.”
“That is very interesting,” Wanhope allowed.
“But do lost people really always walk in a vicious circle?” Minver asked.
Rulledge would not let Wanhope answer. “Go on, Halson,” he said.
Halson roused himself from the reverie in which he was sitting with glazed eyes. “Well, what made it a little more anxious was that he had heard of bears on that mountain, and the green afternoon light among the trees was perceptibly paling. He suggested shouting, but she wouldn't let him; she said it would be ridiculous, if the others heard them, and useless if they didn't. So they tramped on till—till the accident happened.”
“The accident!” Rulledge exclaimed in the voice of our joint emotion.
“He stepped on a loose stone and turned his foot,” Halson explained. “It wasn't a sprain, luckily, but it hurt enough. He turned so white that she noticed it, and asked him what was the matter. Of course that shut his mouth the closer, but it morally doubled his motive, and he kept himself from crying out till the sudden pain of the wrench was over. He said merely that he thought he had heard something, and he had—an awful ringing in his ears; but he didn't mean that, and he started on again. The worst was trying to walk without limping, and to talk cheerfully and encouragingly, with that agony tearing at him. But he managed somehow, and he was congratulating himself on his success, when he tumbled down in a dead faint.”
“Oh, come, now!” Minver protested.
“It is like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated by accident instead of motive, isn't it?” Halson smiled with radiant recognition.