n a precise, matter-of-fact manner.
It seemed to him impossible that people could resist the temptation of
fastening the loose end to a staple in the wall while they went for the
nearest police official. Crouching in holes or hidden in thickets, he
had tried to read the faces of unsuspecting free settlers working in the
clearings or passing along the paths within a foot or two of his
eyes. His feeling was that no man on earth could be trusted with the
temptation of the chain.

One day, however, he chanced to come upon a solitary woman. It was on an
open slope of rough grass outside the forest. She sat on the bank of a
narrow stream; she had a red handkerchief on her head and a small basket
was lying on the ground near her hand. At a little distance could be
seen a cluster of log cabins, with a water-mill over a dammed pool
shaded by birch trees and looking bright as glass in the twilight. He
approached her silently, his hatchet stuck in his iron belt, a thick
cudgel in his hand; there were leaves and bits of twig in his tangled
hair, in his matted beard; bunches of rags he had wound round the links
fluttered from his waist. A faint clink of his fetters made the woman
turn her head. Too terrified by this savage apparition to jump up or
even to scream, she was yet too stout-hearted to faint.... Expecting
nothing less than to be murdered on the spot she covered her eyes with
her hands to avoid the sight of the descending axe. When at last she
found courage to look again, she saw the shaggy wild man sitting on
the bank six feet away from her. His thin, sinewy arms hugged his naked
legs; the long beard covered the knees on which he rested his chin; all
these clasped, folded limbs, the bare shoulders, the wild head with red
staring eyes, shook and trembled violently while the bestial creature
was making efforts to speak. It was six weeks since he had heard the
sound of his own voice. It seemed as though he had lost the faculty
of speech. He had become a dumb and despairing brute, till the woman's
sudden, unexpected cry of profound pity, the insight of her feminine
compassion discovering the complex misery of the man under the
terrifying aspect of the monster, restored him to the ranks of humanity.
This point of view is presented in his book, with a very effective
eloquence. She ended, he says, by shedding tears over him, sacred,
redeeming tears, while he also wept with joy in the manner of a
converted sinner. Directing him to