“But I must qualify my thought to this extent. There are numerous species of animals which we have subdued to our own purposes, and that we confine around us, either that they may do work on our behalf, or that we may eat their bodies, or both, and there is a diminished ability to avoid poisonous substances among these creatures, as their lives approximate more nearly to the condition of those who keep them.--But this touches on much which would be long to explain, and I see that you do not understand fairly, if I give you the facts only.” She answered, “It is a wonderful world, and a very hideous. But I have much to ask concerning these creatures that dwell with you, and that you eat when they die. For the time, let us leave it.” While we had conversed in this way, I had been occupied in opening the small parcel of my remaining possessions, and drying them as well as I was able, their importance to me being too great for my mind to be seriously affected by the knowledge that she regarded them as a humorous evidence of my inferiority to every other created thing, though she admitted very frankly that the Dwellers were not entirely exempt from a corresponding necessity. Now I made up my bundle again, and having eaten freely of the strange fruit, I expressed my readiness to explore the golden lights and shadows of the forest that lay before us. We had agreed that I should now depend upon my own vitality, even though our progress must necessarily be slower in consequence, but I rose and went forward very buoyantly, and though I knew that she was restraining her natural pace to keep beside me, I was well content to feel that I was moving with a lightness and energy which she could not have expected from any previous experience. There may have been some exhilarating quality in the food which I had just eaten, but, apart from that possibility, I had rested well, the air was pleasantly warm, and I had a sense of unaccustomed freedom from the rags which I had discarded. Had there been a hard surface beneath us, I might have regretted the impulse on which I had left my boots,--though it would have been equally correct to say they had left me,--but the moss was soft and deep, and though it gave a curious tingling sensation (which I forgot subsequently) it was otherwise a very soft and pleasant carpet on which to tread. The wood which we were now entering must have stretched (as I calculated) for about forty miles along the great valley which lay within the ridge of coast-wise hills which we had to reach and cross to gain our objective. It was probably about ten miles wide at the point at which we were attempting to pass it. We had gone about half-a-mile at a very quick walk, the trees not being sufficiently close to obstruct us seriously, when my companion asked me if there were nothing that occurred to me as unusual in the scene around us.