ly, and it
glows for you when you wish to be reflective.

After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out
of the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and
silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with
the blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this
spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for
me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh
wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged
here too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected or
forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than
that.

And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire.
As I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little
droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world
alive. I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at my
fire, and once or twice I was almost sure I heard voices--whispering--,
perhaps the voices of the woods.

Occasionally I added, with some amusement, a few dry pages of Montaigne
to the fire, and watched the cheerful blaze that followed.

"No," said I, "Montaigne is not for the open spaces and the stars.
Without a roof over his head Montaigne would--well, die of sneezing."

So I sat all night long there by the tree. Occasionally I dropped into a
light sleep, and then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and awakened,
to build up the fire and doze again. I saw the first faint gray streaks
of dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before the
sunrise, and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day--

When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about me
curiously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn.

"Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?" asked the
sturdy farmer.

"I'm that fellow," I said.

"Why didn't you come right up to the house?"

"Well--" I said, and then paused.

"Well..." said I.

CHAPTER VIII. THE HEDGE

Strange, strange, how small the big world is!

"Why didn't you come right into the house?" the sturdy farmer had asked
me when I came out of the meadow where I had spent the night under the
stars.

"Well," I said, turning the question as adroitly as I could, "I'll make
it up by going into the house now."

So I went with him into his fine, comfortable house.

"This