In such a case, the choice of the wayfarer becomes boundless, and is only limited by the horizon and circumstances. As matters were, he had scarcely enough to live on--not nearly enough to do so as his tastes and habits suggested; and yet, by one bold stroke, with luck to back it, he might, not "one day" (_that_ would have had small charm for him), but at once, and for his life-long, be rich and prosperous. He could not be said to have expectations, but his position was not without certain contingencies, the extreme brilliancy of which might almost atone for their vagueness. It was from a dream of future greatness, or what seemed to him as such, wherein he saw himself wealthy and powerful, surrounded with luxury and with the ministers of every pleasure, that he was suddenly and sharply awakened by a trifling incident--the snapping of a dead twig in the copse hard by. In an instant the glittering gossamer of thought was swept aside, and the young fellow was all ear and eye. The wind had dropped for some time, and the silence was intense; that solemn hush seemed to pervade the forest which some poet has attributed to the cessation of spiritual life, as though the haunters of the glade were _waiting_ for the resumption of their occupations until the interloping mortal should pass by. Nothing stirred, or, if so, it was motion without sound, as when the full-feathered owl slid softly through the midnight air above him. Not a dead leaf fell; and where the leaves had fallen there they lay. How was it, then, that a twig broke? The deer were couched; the pheasants sat at roost, their heads beneath that splendid coverlet, their wing; and though there were creeping things which even midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness, Yorke had imbibed enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was produced by none of these. A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different fashion. Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then cautious footsteps fell upon the frosty leaves, and, with a light leap on the bank that fringed the copse, the poacher stood in the open.