Slowly, slowly, I crawled along. But stop! one step further and I must have been killed! A rock as steep and high as a house, as if cut out with a knife, overhung the river. I stopped short, and could have seized the tops of the larches with my hands, but there was no path. I went back two steps, and leant on a tree, and now my mind was easier. I saw running water. God be praised and blessed for all His mercies! this is the valley, and to have reached the valley is to have reached home. How pleasant was the rushing of water to my ears--so calm, so peaceful, so homelike! even seeing and hearing it quenched my thirst. I now accomplished the greatest feat of the whole, when, after a long round, I at last contrived, after much scrambling, to land in the valley. And when I actually found myself there, then, and not till then, I thought myself safe. "Big drops of heat were running down my cheeks. I seated myself on a large log of wood, lying on the ground, close to the very beech tree where the hatter met Joseph. I was so overheated that I would gladly have got rid of some of my wraps; but there was a very cool breeze in the valley. The sun was just sinking behind the hills, and it was not yet noon when I left home. I saw swallows flying about. Oh! what a pleasant sight that was to me! And then I heard a cock crow. No nightingale's song could sound half so sweet as the crowing of a cock to a person who has lost his way. Well! I felt that I was now in the world again. I heard a hen cackling: wherever an egg is laid, there is sure to be a woman near. I heard a dog barking: where a dog barks a man is not far off. I am once more among my fellow-creatures. Presently I heard the rushing of a mill. Where am I, then?