ng steadily and quickly forward, during what seemed, in
the deep gloom, a considerable time, I eventually emerged into 'the
clear obscure,' the moon having at length set, and left the sky, and
all such wanderers as myself, to the good offices of the stars. I was
now on the opposite verge of the wood to that I had entered by, and
found myself by the side of a narrow corn-field, with _another_
wooded hill on its further side, and heard, within hailing
distance--more delightful than music to my ear--the grating sound of
cart-wheels, which appeared to be going in an oblique, but nearly
opposite direction to that in which I had just been moving. It was
quite impossible to see anything so far off; but I hailed the presumed
carter repeatedly, in my loudest and best German, asking my way.

'Follow on by the foot of the wood, and you'll get there in time,' was
the reply, at length faintly heard in the distance, and the cart
rumbled heavily away again, leaving me just as wise as before; for
which was _head_ and which was _foot_ of the wood I knew no more than
the child unborn. Yet I feared to dash through the intervening corn in
the direction of the receding and already distant cart, neither
knowing what the nature of the intermediate ground might prove, nor
whether, supposing it practicable in the dark, such an infringement of
rural property might not lead to disagreeable consequences, and in
nowise further me in the attainment of the piece of knowledge which I
stood so much in need of. So, I took on chance to my left hand, as the
most distant from the finger-post I had fallen upon an hour and a half
before.

The sound of the cart which long tingled in my ears, and the utter
disappointment of my suddenly raised hopes, only rendered my sense of
solitude and helplessness more intense. Indeed, I sometimes almost
doubted whether the whole thing--cart and carter, or, rather, rumbling
wheels and faint, chilling, distant voice--might not have been the
delusion of my reeling brain, debilitated by overfatigue and long
fasting (for every one knows the early hour at which a German dinner
takes place); and on subsequent inquiry, I could not hear of any cart
having passed in that quarter at all.

It was singular how long I wandered about, and every now and then in
cultivated districts, without hearing a single human voice even in the
earlier portion of the evening--nay, any sound whatever, save once or
twice the fierce warning bark of a s