indeed, and I suppose the same is true of ninety-nine out of a hundred
of the people in America to-day, I had never before found myself where
nothing stood between nature and me, where I had no place to sleep, no
shelter for the night--nor any prospect of finding one. I was infinitely
less resourceful at that moment than a rabbit, or a partridge, or a gray
squirrel.

Presently I sat down on the ground where I had been standing, with a
vague fear (absurd to look back upon) that it, too, in some manner might
slip away from under me. And as I sat there I began to have familiar
gnawings at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered that, save for
a couple of Mrs. Clark's doughnuts eaten while I was sitting on the
hillside, ages ago, I had had nothing since my early breakfast.

With this thought of my predicament--and the glimpse I had of myself
"hungry and homeless"--the humour of the whole situation suddenly came
over me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dwelt
upon my recent adventures, with a long, loud, hearty laugh.

As I laughed--and what a roar it made in that darkness!--I got up on my
feet and looked up at the sky. One bright star shone out over the woods,
and in high heavens I could see dimly the white path of the Milky Way.
And all at once I seemed again to be in command of myself and of the
world. I felt a sudden lift and thrill of the spirits, a warm sense that
this too was part of the great adventure--the Thing Itself.

"This is the light," I said looking up again at the sky and the single
bright star, "which is set for me to-night. I will make my bed by it."

I can hope to make no one understand (unless he understands already)
with what joy of adventure I now crept through the meadow toward the
wood. It was an unknown, unexplored world I was in, and I, the fortunate
discoverer, had here to shift for himself, make his home under the
stars! Marquette on the wild shores of the Mississippi, or Stanley in
Africa, had no joy that I did not know at that moment.

I crept along the meadow and came at last to the wood. Here I chose a
somewhat sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree--and yet a spot not
so obscured that I could not look out over the open spaces of the meadow
and see the sky. Here, groping in the darkness, like some primitive
creature, I raked together a pile of leaves with my fingers, and found
dead twigs and branches of trees; but in that moist forest (where the
rain had fa