a den, but could find none.

A small bird, a wren, was picking among the moss; every now and then it
fluttered a little way, stopped, and picked again. 'Now what instinct
guided its search for worms?' he asked, and getting up, he followed the
bird, but it escaped into a thicket. There were only hazel-stems in the
interspace he had chosen to hide himself in, but there were thickets
nearly all about it, and it took some time to find a path through these.
After a time one was found, and by noticing everything he tried to pass
the time away and make himself secure against being surprised.

The path soon came to an end, and he walked round to the other side of
the wood, to see if the bushes were thick enough to prevent anyone from
coming upon him suddenly from that side; and when all searches were
finished he came back, thinking of what his future life would be without
Nora. But he must not think of her, he must learn to forget her; for the
time being at least, his consideration must be of himself in his present
circumstances, and he felt that if he did not fix his thoughts on
external things, his courage--or should he say his will?--would desert
him. It did not need much courage to swim across the lake, much more to
leave the parish, and once on the other side he must go any whither, no
whither, for he couldn't return to Catherine in a frieze coat and a pair
of corduroy trousers. Her face when she saw him! But of what use
thinking of these things? He was going; everything was settled. If he
could only restrain his thoughts--they were as wild as bees.

Standing by a hazel-stem, his hand upon a bough, he fell to thinking
what his life would be, and very soon becoming implicated in a dream, he
lost consciousness of time and place, and was borne away as by a
current; he floated down his future life, seeing his garret room more
clearly than he had ever seen it--his bed, his washhand-stand, and the
little table on which he did his writing. No doubt most of it would be
done in the office, but some of it would be done at home; and at
nightfall he would descend from his garret like a bat from the eaves.

Journalists flutter like bats about newspaper offices. The bats haunt
the same eaves, but the journalist drifts from city to city, from county
to county, busying himself with ideas that were not his yesterday, and
will not be his to-morrow. An interview with a statesman is followed by
a review of a book, and the day after he may