print of my own foot, I had played the
part of those fools, who strive to make stories of spectres and
apparitions, and then are themselves frighted at them more than any
body else.

Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again; for I had not
stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to
starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors, but some
barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked
too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor creatures were
in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and indeed it almost
spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk.

Heartening myself therefore with the belief, that this was nothing but
the print of one of my own feet (and so I might be truly said to start
at my own shadow), I began to go abroad again, and went to my
country-house to milk my flock: but to see with what fear I went
forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready, every now and
then, to lay down my basket, and run for my life; it would have made any
one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had
been lately most terribly frighted; and so indeed I had.

However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing,
I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in
it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of
this, till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a
foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or
fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. But when I came to
the place first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my
boat, I could not possibly be on shore any where thereabouts. Secondly,
when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so
large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new
imaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree; so
that I shook with cold, like one in an ague, and I went home again,
filled with the belief, that some man or men had been on shore there;
or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised
before I was aware; and what course to take for my security, I knew not.

O what ridiculous resolutions men take, when possessed with fear! It
deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their
relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was, to throw