The object of all these anxieties lurked somewhere among the woods in one of the shady nooks he had known when he was a boy, and which probably no one but himself and his old rustic companions knew, in the very madness of misery, while the daylight lasted. He hid himself like the first sinners--he could not bear the calm eye of the day, the cold unpitying light, that would show him and point him out to the scrutiny of men. He lay thus panting on the earth, hidden by the bushes, his mind and all his being in so wild a turmoil that, after a while, the very cause of it got obscure in his mind, and he knew only that he was a fugitive, heart-broken, ruined, and disgraced, without knowing why. He had no sooner reached a covert in the copse than there seemed to gleam before him another, better hiding-place, a cool nook by a little stream, where nobody could ever find him, where he could have a draught of water when he pleased, and the trickle of the brook to bear him company. As soon as it was dark he made his way out of the chase, and fled along the most unfrequented paths, under hedgerows and across fields, to reach this place. The country was very still, Sunday night, no one about, no one stirring anywhere. Here and there he made a detour to escape the lighted windows of a roadside cottage, whence some one might look out and see him: sometimes shrank aside into a ditch or under a tree when he saw some solitary passenger in the distance--but met no one, saw no one, and at last came to the shelter he had thought of. It was deep down among thick brushwood, heather, and whins, and young birch-trees, by the side of a little stream which flowed from the hills to the lake. The ground was damp, but he did not care. He dipped his burning brow in the stream, and drank long draughts of it. This gave him a little relief, a little physical ease; and the walk had been long, and he was unused to so much exertion. Finally, he fell asleep, with his head, like Jacob's, on a stone. The shock he had sustained seemed to take from Abel all consciousness of any claims upon him or duties to the outside world. He remembered nothing about the Landales, thought nothing of where he was to go when the morning should come, again betraying him. He thought indeed of no morning, only of safety from some immediate danger, though he could not tell what that was.