For a time I endured this servitude in an extraordinary barrenness of mind. Not even the thought of escape stirred me to activity. The sudden misfortune which had befallen me seemed to have numbed and dulled all but my bodily faculties. Moreover the long and arduous labour, to which I was set, wearied me in the extreme, and each evening I came back so broken with fatigue that I wished for nothing so much as to climb into my loft and stretch myself out upon my branches in the dark, though even then I was often too tired to sleep, and so would lie hour after hour counting the seconds by the pulsing of my sinews. After a couple of weeks had gone by, however, I began to take some notice of the place of my captivity, and to seek whether by any means I might compass my escape. For I recalled, with an apprehension which quickened speedily, as I dwelt upon it, into a panic of terror, the singular prophecy and sentence which the Countess had flung at me. I began to see myself already sinking into a dull apathy, performing my daily task, with no thought beyond my physical needs, until I became one with these coarse peasants in spirit and mind. What else, I reflected, could happen? Remote from all intercourse or companionship, with not so much as a single book to divert me, labouring with my hands from dawn to dusk, and guarded ever by ignorant boors who reckoned me not worth even their speech--what else could I become? 'Twould need far less than a lifetime to work the transformation! But, however carefully I watched, I could by no means come at the opportunity of an evasion. At night, as I have said, Groder shared the loft with me, and slept over the trap-door; nor was there any window or other opening through which I might drop to the ground, since the roof reached down to the flooring upon every side. This roof consisted of a thatch of boughs, and of large sheets of bark superimposed upon them, and weighted down by heavy stones. One night, indeed, when Groder lay snoring, I endeavoured to force an opening through the thatch; but I had no help beyond what my hands afforded me--for they took my axe from me every night as soon as we got back to the hut--and I was compelled, moreover, to work with the greatest caution and quietude lest I should awaken my companion; so that I got nothing for my pains but a few scratches and an additional fatigue to carry through the morrow. Nor, indeed, was my case any better in the day-time. We all worked in the same clearing, and at no single moment was I out of sight of my gaolers. But even had I succeeded in eluding them, I doubt whether at this time I should have been any nearer the fulfilment of my desire. For I knew not so much as the direction of Lukstein, and I should only have wandered helpless amongst these heights until either I was recaptured or perished miserably upon the desolate wastes of snow.