After struggling and wading till I was overheated, though the night was chilly, I got among some dry brake which were up to my chin; and looking straight before me, I saw in the gray of the night something like a huge black mass in the middle of an open tract. I felt sure it was the big oak, and that I had reached the end of the forest. I had never seen the tree, but I had heard tell of it, for it was famous as one of the oldest in the country; and from the talk of others I knew pretty well how it was shaped. You must surely have seen it. It is a gnarled tree, topped in its youth by some accident so that it grew in breadth and thickness; its foliage, shrivelled by the winter, still clung to it, and it stood up there like a rock looking to heaven. I was about to go towards it, thinking I should find the path, which made a straight line through the woods, when I heard a sound of music that was something like bagpipes, but so loud you might think it thunder. Don't ask me why a thing which ought to have comforted me, by showing the presence of a human being, did actually frighten me like a child. I must honestly tell you that in spite of my nineteen years and a good pair of fists, I had not felt easy after I found I had lost my way. It was not because wolves do come down sometimes into that forest from the great woods of Saint-Aoust that I lost heart, nor yet that I feared any evil-intentioned Christian; but I was chilled through with the kind of fear that you can't explain to your own self, because you don't really know the cause of it. The dark night; the wintry fog; a jumble of noises heard in the woods, with others coming from the plain; a crowd of foolish stories which you have heard, and which now start up in your head; and finally the idea of being all alone far from your own belongings,--there's enough in all that to upset your mind when you are young, and, indeed, when you are old. You can laugh at me if you like; but that music, in that lonely place, seemed to me devilish. It was too loud and strong to be natural, and the tune was so sad and strange that it was not like any other known music on this Christian earth. I quickened my steps; then I stopped, amazed at another sound. While the music clashed on one side, a bell chimed on the other; and the two sounds came at me, as if to prevent me from going forward or back. I jumped to one side and hid in the brake; and as I did so, there was a flash of light about four feet from me, and I saw a large black animal, that I couldn't make out distinctly, spring up and disappear at a run.