When he awoke it was dark. He
groped his way through the thicket. A few stars were shining directly
above him, but beyond and below, everything was lost in the soft,
white, fleecy veil of fog. Whatever light or fire might have betokened
human habitation was hidden. To push on blindly would be madness; he
could only wait for morning. It suited the outcast's lazy philosophy.
He crept back again to his bed in the hollow and slept. In that
profound silence and shadow, shut out from human association and
sympathy by the ghostly fog, what torturing visions conjured up by
remorse and fear should have pursued him? What spirit passed before
him, or slowly shaped itself out of the infinite blackness of the wood?
None. As he slipped gently into that blackness he remembered with a
slight regret, some biscuits that were dropped from the coach by a
careless luncheon-consuming passenger. That pang over, he slept as
sweetly, as profoundly, as divinely, as a child.
CHAPTER II.
He awoke with the aroma of the woods still steeping his senses. His
first instinct was that of all young animals: he seized a few of the
young, tender green leaves of the yerba buena vine that crept over his
mossy pillow and ate them, being rewarded by a half berry-like flavor
that seemed to soothe the cravings of his appetite.
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