He did not call me nor show the slightest fear lest he should fail to overtake me. Ha had already learned that love always overtakes the beloved in that blessed land. "You forgot your little boy," he said reproachfully, and put his hand quietly within mine and walked on beside me, and forgot that he had been forgotten immediately, and looked upward at me radiantly. Remembering the command to await what should occur, and do as my heart prompted, I accepted this accident as part of a purpose wiser than my own, and kissed the little fellow, and we travelled on together. As we came into the hill country, our way grow wilder and more desolate. The last of the stray travellers whom we chanced to meet was now well behind us. In the wide spaces we were quite alone. Behind us, dim and distant, shimmering like an opal in a haze of fair half-tints, the city shone. On either side of us, the forest trees began to tread solemnly, like a vast procession which no man could number, keeping step to some inaudible march. Before us, the great crest of the mountains towered dark as death against the upper sky. As we drew near, the loneliness of these hills was to me as something of which I had never conceived before. Earth did not hold their likeness, and my heart had never held their meaning. I could almost have dreaded them, as we came nearer to them; but the deviation of the paths had long since ceased. In the desolate country which we were now crossing choice was removed from conduct. There was but one course for me to take; I took it unhesitatingly and without fear, which belongs wholly to the lower life. As we advanced, the great mountain barrier rose high and higher before us, till it seemed to shut out the very sky from our sight, and to crush us apart from all the world--nay, from either world or any, I could have thought, so desolate and so awful was the spot. But when we had entered the shadow formed by the mighty range, and had accustomed our eyes to it for a time, I perceived, not far ahead of me, but in fact quite near and sudden to the view, a long, dark, sharp defile cut far into the heart of the hills. The place had an unpleasant look, and I stopped before it to regard it. It was so grim of aspect and so assured of outline, like a trap for travellers which had hung there from all eternity, that I liked it not, and would not that the child should enter till I had first inspected it. Therefore, I bade him sit and rest upon a bed of crimson mosses which grew at the feet of a great rock, and to remain until he saw me turn to him again; and with many cautions and the most minute directions for his obedience and his comfort, I left him, and advanced alone.