"No need in your case, surely; but for me," he went on, as if reading my thoughts, "who can tell? My sins will follow me on horseback, let me do what I may. There will be no dodging them, either. It is the first misstep that guides your footsteps ever afterward, my son; but the roads seem so much alike at the start that you can hardly tell one from the other. Both are bordered with flowers, and the sun shines as warm on one as the other; and yet the difference and the quick change if we go wrong! Then the trees lose their green and the flowers fade, and the sun goes out as if it were night. Look to your footsteps, my friend, for once you stray off the beaten path, the lash of justice will scourge you ever afterward. Such is the criminal, and such am I, and there is never but one ending. Who that starts wrong, though, ever gives the ending or its quick coming a thought? This is my sermon to you, my son, and it is real preaching, for that was the calling I meant to follow for man’s good and my own salvation when I started out in life. What a mess I have made of it, though, as others have done and will to the end. Not to repent, either, nor strive to, for on this road there is no turning back. The silliness of it all, and the futility! But do not regard what I say, lad. The lost ever thus grieve and go on preaching and reforming and falling anew. So there you are, and here am I; and which way do you go now?" he added, changing in a whimsical way, but as if pleased with his sermon. "I’m going to Appletop," I answered, sorrowing over what he said, knowing he was making himself out bad when he was only unfortunate and foolish; "but I don’t know where I am nor which way to go." "I will put you on the road, and it is but a step," he answered; and taking my hand we plunged into the forest again. Walking on without speaking for half an hour, we came at last to a road that stretched away, white and glistening, in the bright moonlight. "Here is your way, my son, and a plain one, too. Go to the right for a mile or thereabouts, where a road leads to the left. Follow it and it will take you zigzagging through the country to Appletop. You can’t miss the way, and nothing will harm you; or if you should run across robbers, and maybe you will, say nothing, but go on, for they will not harm a lad like you." "Where are you going?" I asked, reluctant to leave him. "Why, what does that matter?" he answered, putting me off; but thinking better of it, added: "I am going to find my horse, the one I took from my friend the robber. He does not know any one but me now, nor I any one but him, and I am not going to leave him here." "Where is he?" I asked. "In the village we have just left; but the night is like day, and I shall have no trouble in finding him, and perhaps Moth’s, too, who knows!" he added, his eyes lighting up as a boy’s might when about to play a trick on a playmate.