"
Verily, I was in a scrape. If I chanced to hit the right road, I
should certainly get into the midst of the robber band and be beaten
because I had no money; if I did not find the road, I should be beaten
of course. I wasted very little thought upon the matter, but took
the first road at hand, the one past the inn which led away from
the village. The horseman galloped back to his companion, and both
followed me slowly at some distance. Thus we wandered on foolishly
enough at hap-hazard through the moonlit night. The road led through
forests on the side of a mountain. Sometimes we could see, above the
tops of the pines stirring darkly beneath us, far abroad into the
deep, silent valleys; now and then a nightingale burst into song; the
dogs bayed in the distant villages. A brook babbled ceaselessly from
the depths below us, and here and there glistened in the moonlight.
The hush was disturbed by the monotonous tramp of the horses and by
the stir and movement of their riders, who talked together incessantly
in a foreign tongue, and the bright moonlight contrasted sharply with
the long shadows of the trees, which swept across the figures of the
horsemen, making them appear now black, now light, now dwarfish, and
anon gigantic. My thoughts grew strangely confused, as though in a
dream from which I could not waken, but I marched straight ahead. We
certainly must reach the end of the forest and of the night too, I
thought.
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