Now did I begin to consider and to ponder upon my unhappy condition and prospects, and to think how I might best help myself out of my plight. For whither should I go? Here indeed my poor wits were far too slender to devise a plan. Yet they served me so far that towards evening I ran into the woods. But then whither was I to go further? for the ways of the wood were as little known to me as the passage beyond Nova Zembla through the Arctic Ocean to China. 'Tis true the pitch-dark night was my protection: yet to my dark wits it seemed not dark enough; so I did hide myself in a close thicket wherein I could hear both the shrieks of the tortured peasants and the song of the nightingales; which birds regarded not the peasants either to show compassion for them or to stop their sweet song for their sakes: and so I laid myself, as free from care, upon one ear, and fell asleep. But when the morning star began to glimmer in the East I could see my poor dad's house all aflame, yet none that sought to stop the fire: so I betook myself thither in hopes to have some news of my dad; whereupon I was espied by five troopers, of whom one holloaed to me, "Come hither, boy, or I will shoot thee dead." But I stood stock-still and open-mouthed, as knowing not what he meant or would have; and I standing there and gaping upon them like a cat at a new barn-door, and they, by reason of a morass between, not being able to come at me, which vexed them mightily, one discharged his carbine at me: at which sudden flame of fire and unexpected noise, which the echo, repeating it many times, made more dreadful, I was so terrified that forthwith I fell to the ground, and for terror durst not move a finger, though the troopers went their way and doubtless left me for dead; nor for that whole day had I spirit to rise up. But night again overtaking me, I stood up and wandered away into the woods until I saw afar off a dead tree that shone: and this again wrought in me a new fear: wherefore I turned me about post-haste and ran till I saw another such tree, from which I hurried away again, and in this manner spent the night running from one dead tree to another. At last came blessed daylight to my help, and bade those trees leave me untroubled in its presence: yet was I not much the better thereby; for my heart was full of fear and dread, my brain of foolish fancies, and my legs of weariness, my belly of hunger, and mine eyes of sleep. So I went on and on and knew not whither; yet the further I went the thicker grew the wood and the greater the distance from all human kind. So now I came to my senses, and perceived (yet without knowing it) the effect of ignorance and want of knowledge: for if an unreasoning beast had been in my place he would have known what to do for his sustenance better than I. Yet I had wit enough when darkness again overtook me to creep into a hollow tree and there take up my quarters for the night.