two after the stranger had disappeared, a man answering to
the description came to his door, his clothes in tatters, and, in a
wild and incoherent manner, asked the way to the village from which he
had gone, but, before any reply could be made, started off running and
disappeared in the woods again. He had contracted the woods madness
and so perished.

Of this danger I was well informed, and, beside, I was more or less
a child of the woodlands, and had no apprehension of it, having,
moreover, an implicit faith in what I considered a kind of spiritual
guidance in all I did,--a delusion which at least served to keep me in
absolute self-control under all circumstances. It was probably this
which kept me during my wanderings from falling into the panic which
constituted the real danger, depriving the victim temporarily of the
use of his reasoning powers. I had, however, an interesting experience
which gave me a clearer comprehension of the phenomenon, which is a
very curious one.

One of the woodsmen had told me of a waterfall on a trout stream of
considerable size which emptied into a lake near by us, and, in the
hope of finding a subject in it, I took the boat one afternoon and
began to follow the course of the stream up from the mouth. After
a half mile of clear and navigable water it became so clogged with
fallen trees that more lifting than paddling was required, and, as its
course was extremely tortuous, I occasionally got out and examined the
vicinity of the stream bed and the course above, if, perchance,
there might be better navigation beyond. On one of the digressions I
suddenly came on the stream running back on its previous course and
parallel to it. Instantly, in the twinkling of an eye, the entire
landscape seemed to have changed its bearings,--the sun, which was
clear in the sky, it being about three o'clock, shone to me out of
the north, and it was impossible to convince myself that my senses
deceived me, or accept the fact that the sun must be in the southwest,
the general direction from which the stream was flowing, and that, to
get home again, I must turn my back to it, if I had lost my boat, as
seemed certain. Then began to come over me, like an evil spell, the
bewilderment and the panic which accompanied it. Fortunately, I
recognized this panic from the experiences I knew of, and was aware
that if I gave way to it I was a lost man, beyond any finding by the
woodsmen, even if they attempted to track me