a shock of fear Ralph saw
that he had been nearly betrayed; that this was the Snake itself of
which he had been warned; he struck with his staff at the little
venomous thing, which darted forward with a wicked hiss, and Ralph
only avoided it with a spring. Then without an instant's thought he
turned and ran along the wood-path, chiding himself bitterly for his
folly. He had nearly slept; he had only not been stung to death; and
he thought of how he would have lain, a stiffening figure, till the
crows gathered round him and pulled the flesh from his bones.

After this the way became more toilsome; the track indeed was plain
enough, but it was strewn with stones, and little thorny plants grew
everywhere, which tripped his feet and sometimes pierced his skin; it
grew darker too, as though night were coming on. Presently he came to
a clearing in the forest; on a slope to his right hand, he saw a
little hut of boughs, with a few poor garden herbs about it. A man was
crouched among them, as though he were digging; he was only some
thirty paces away; Ralph stopped for a moment, and the man rose up and
looked at him. Ralph saw a strangely distorted face under a hairless
brow. There were holes where the eyes should have been, and in these
the eyes were so deeply sunk that they looked but like pits of shade.
Presently the other began to move towards him, waving a large
misshapen hand which gleamed with a kind of scurfy whiteness; and he
cried out unintelligible words, which seemed half angry, half piteous.
Ralph knew that the Leper was before him, and though he loathed to fly
before so miserable a wretch, he turned and hurried on into the
forest; the creature screamed the louder, and it seemed as though he
were asking an alms, but he hobbled so slowly on his thick legs,
foully bandaged with rags, that Ralph soon distanced him, and he heard
the wretch stop and fall to cursing. This sad and fearful encounter
made Ralph sick at heart; but he strove to thank God for another
danger escaped, and hastened on.

Gradually he became aware by various signs that he was approaching
some inhabited place; all at once he came upon a fair house in a piece
of open ground, that looked to him at first so like the house of the
treasure, that he thought he had come back to it. But when he looked
more closely upon it, he saw that it was not the same; it was somewhat
more meanly built, and had not the grave and solid air that the other
had; presently