stepped
out boldly and manfully.

As I walked on, the night cleared, a light fresh breeze dissipated the
vapor, and refreshed me as I went, while overhead, myriads of bright
stars shone out, and served to guide me on the trackless waste. If I
often felt fatigue stealing over me, a thought of the Lazaretto and its
fearful inmates nerved me to new efforts. Sometimes so possessed did I
become with these fears that I actually increased my speed to a run, and
thus, exerting myself to the very utmost, I made immense progress, and
ere day began to break, found myself at the margin of the moor, and the
entrance to a dense forest, which I remembered often to have seen of a
clear evening from the garden of the Lazaretto. With what gratitude
did I accept that leafy shade, which seemed to promise me its refuge! I
threw my arms around a tree, in the ecstasy of my delight, and felt that
now indeed I had gained a haven of rest and safety. By good fortune,
too, I came upon a pathway: a small piece of board nailed to a tree
bore the name of a village; but this I could not read in the half light;
still, it was enough that I was sure of a beaten track, and could not be
lost in the dense intricacies of a pine-forest.

The change of scene encouraged me to renewed exertion. And I began
to feel that, so far from experiencing fatigue, each mile I travelled
supplied me with greater energy, and that my strength rose each hour as
I left the Lazaretto farther behind me.

"Ah, Con, my boy, fortune has not taken leave of you yet!" said I, as I
discovered that my severe exercise, far from being injurious, as I had
feared, was already bringing back the glow of health to my frame, and
spirit to my heart.

There is something unspeakably calming in the solitude of a forest,
unlike the lone sensations inspired by the sea or the prairie; the
feeling is one of peaceful quietude. The tempered sunlight stealing
through the leaves and boughs entangled; the giant trunks that tell
of centuries ago; the short, smooth, mossy turf through which the tiny
rivulet runs without a channel; the little vistas opening like alleys,
or ending in some shady nook, bower-like and retired,--fill the mind
with a myriad of pleasant fancies. Instead of wandering forth over the
immensity of space, as when contemplating the great ocean or the desert,
the heart here falls back upon itself, and is satisfied with the little
world around it.

Such were my reveries as I lay down be