thus I
should appear before her?

A hundred times came the thought to join the new levies as a soldier,
to carry a musket in the ranks. But then came back in all its force
the memory of the distrust and suspicion my services had met with: the
conviction hourly became clearer to me, that I fought not for liberty,
but despotism; that it was not freedom, but slavery, in whose cause I
shed my blood.

To avoid meeting with the detachments which each day occupied the road,
I turned from the _chaussee_ on passing Eisenach, and took a forest
path that led through Murbach to Fulda. My path led through the Creutz
Mountains,--a wild and unfrequented tract of country, where few cottages
were to be seen, and scarcely a village existed. Vast forests of dark
pines, or bleak and barren mountains, stretched away on either side; a
few patches of miserable tillage here and there met the view; but the
scene was one of saddening influence, and harmonized but too nearly with
my own despondency.

To reach a place of shelter for the night, I was more than once obliged
to walk twelve leagues during the day, and had thus to set out before
daylight. This exertion, however, brought its own reward: the stimulant
of labor, the necessity of a task, gradually allayed the mental
irritation I suffered under; a healthier and more manly tone of thinking
succeeded to my former regrets; and with a heart elevated, if not
cheered, I continued my way.

The third day of my toilsome journey was drawing to a close. A mass of
heavy and lowering clouds, dark and thunder-charged, slowly moved along
the sky; and a low, moaning sound, that seemed to sigh along the
ground, boded the approach of a storm. I was still three leagues from my
halting-place, and began to deliberate within myself whether the dense
pine-wood, which came down to the side of the road, might not afford
a safer refuge from the hurricane than the chances of reaching a house
before it broke forth.

The shepherds who frequented these dreary tracts often erected little
huts of bark as a shelter against the cold and severity of the wintry
days, and to find out one of these now was my great endeavor. Scarcely
had I formed the resolve, when I perceived a small path opening into the
wood, at the entrance to which a piece of board nailed against the
trunk of a tree, gave tidings that such a place of security was not far
distant. These signs of forest life I had learned in my wanderings, and
now stro