Then, lo! they had lost courage; their
bulk melted off in fierce vapour, gold and gray, and the sharp outcry of
their shape was gone. As I recall the airy scene, that horizon looks like
the void between a cataclysm and the moving afresh of the spirit of God
upon the face of the waters. I went on and on, I do not know why.
Something enticed me, or I was plunged in some meditation, then
absorbing, now forgotten, not necessarily worthless. I am jealous of
moods that can be forgotten, but such may leave traces in the character.
I wandered on. What ups and downs there were! how uneven was the surface
of the moor! The feet learned what the eyes had not seen.
All at once I woke to the fact that mountains hemmed me in. They looked
mountains, though they were but hills. What had become of home? where was
it? The light lingering in the west might surely have shown me the
direction of it, but I remember no west--nothing but a deep hollow and
dark hills. I was lost!
I was not exactly frightened at first. I knew no cause of dread. I had
never seen a tramp even; I had no sense of the inimical. I knew nothing
of the danger from cold and exposure. But awe of the fading light and
coming darkness awoke in me. I began to be frightened, and fear is like
other live things: once started, it grows. Then first I thought with
dismay, which became terror, of the slimy bogs and the deep pools in
them.
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