nd him, Sprigg
had found himself on the very brink of the declivity. Could it be
possible that he had climbed it without conscious effort? Or, indeed,
without any effort at all of his own! A bear climbing, paw over paw,
might have been equal to the feat; but even a bear, were he minded to
scale the hill, would have chosen a more circuitous and less laborious
route. There was not the sign of a path made by man or beast anywhere to
be seen, either up the steep or along the ridge. Even of his own
footsteps, Sprigg could not discern a single trace, whether in crushed
leaf, or bruised weed, or print of his moccasins left in the soft soil.
The spot was utterly strange to him; it could not have been more so, had
he been taken and set down on a hill in the land of Nod. He looked
around. There were hills far, far beneath the one on which he stood. And
beneath these valleys and plains, while one unbroken forest spread dark
and sombre over all, not a token of man or savage could he discover,
whether in house, or field, or road, or column of smoke curling up from
among the trees. Nothing but woods, woods. Woods! Then, like a sudden
awakening from a wild dream, it flashed upon his consciousness that he
was lost.

"Where am I?" cried the poor boy. "How came I here?"

"He-he-he!"

Sprigg jumped. This time, the sound that seemed so like a laugh was too
completely outside of himself; too little in harmony with his present
thoughts for him to fancy it was himself that laughed. First on this
side, then on that. Quite near at hand he looked--not a thing of life
could he see. He looked far forth; a herd of deer was grazing in a
blue-grass glade, a great way off to the right; and a great way off to
the left, a herd of buffalo, browsing on the tender shoots of a
cane-brake, which skirted the banks of a beautiful river. Behind him,
toward the setting sun, a few birds of prey were wheeling and screaming
aloft in the crimson evening sky. Saving these, not a thing of life or
sound was there to be seen in all the wilds. Lost! Lost! Lost! To find
himself lost is the only discovery your waking dreamer is apt to make.

Then Sprigg looked down and scanned the red moccasins. They showed not a
grain of dust, not a speck of mire, not a stain of grass, or weed, or
water, although he had walked in them--or, if you please, they had
walked with him--through many a mile of grassy wood and reedy swamp,
where path was none, that had ever been trodden by foo