of the sun could not be ascertained through the dense foliage overhead.
He now became seriously alarmed. His heart beat against his ribs as if
it wanted to get out, and he started off at a run in the direction in
which, he felt sure, the ridge lay. Becoming tired and still more
alarmed, he changed his course, eagerly advanced for a short time,
hesitated, changed his course again, and finally stopped altogether, as
the terrible fact flashed upon him that he was really lost in the woods.
He set Snorro on the ground, and, sitting down beside him, burst into
tears.

We need scarcely say that poor Olaf was neither a timid nor an
effeminate boy. It was not for himself that he thus gave way. It was
the sudden opening of his eyes to the terrible consequences of his
disobedience that unmanned him. His quick mind perceived at once that
little Snorro would soon die of cold and hunger if he failed to find his
way out of that wilderness; and when he thought of this, and of the
awful misery that would thus descend on the heads of Karlsefin and
Gudrid, he felt a strange desire that he himself might die there and
then.

This state of mind, however, did not last long. He soon dried his eyes
and braced himself up for another effort. Snorro had gone to sleep the
instant he was laid on the ground. As his luckless guide raised him he
opened his eyes slightly, murmured "O'af," and again went off to the
land of Nod.

Olaf now made a more steady and persevering effort to get out of the
wood, and he was so far successful that he came to ground that was more
open and broken--more like to that through which he had been accustomed
to travel with the men. This encouraged him greatly, for, although he
did not recognise any part of it, he believed that he must now be at all
events not far distant from places that he knew. Here he again looked
for the sun, but the sky had become so thickly overcast that he could
not make out its position. Laying Snorro down, he climbed a tall tree,
but the prospect of interminable forest which he beheld from that point
of vantage did not afford him any clue to his locality. He looked for
the ridge, but there were many ridges in view, any of which might have
been _his_ ridge, but none of which looked precisely like it.

Nevertheless, the upward bound which his spirits had taken when he came
to the more open country did not altogether subside. He still wandered
on manfully, in the hope that he was gradu