delight his eyes with their glitter
and gleam, as completely at his ease as were he perched on his
three-legged stool at home. Of course, then, rambling on thus, with
neither eye nor thought but for the red allurements on his feet, he
must, ere long, lose sight of the road he set out to follow. This will
surprise you the less when told that from the time he had put them on at
the spring, it had seemed to the poor boy's fancy that the moccasins
knew, as well as himself, whither they were bound, and that they would
take him there by the shortest and easiest route, did he but yield
himself to their guidance. The road to be followed, thus lost sight
of--what wonder, then, if the place to be reached should at last be lost
sight of also!

In this strange plight, the young wanderer was pursuing his way, when he
was aroused from his walking dream by a broad, red glare, which struck
full upon his downcast eyes, and for the moment left him blind as night.
Soon, however, his vision returned to him strong and clear, when he
found himself on the top of a lofty hill, just where a gap in the forest
let in the flood of sunlight; and this it was which had dazzled him into
transient blindness, as, too suddenly, he had entered it from out the
sombre shadows, in which he for long hours had been wandering.

Now had you seen that hill, how lofty and steep it was, and marked with
what ease and swiftness our hero scaled it, you would have said at once
that the red moccasins had more to do with the feat than Sprigg's own
legs. The gap in the forest proved to be a long, lane-like opening
through the trees, which covered only the sides of a round-backed ridge.
Through this opening Sprigg had an unobstructed view toward some distant
hills in the West, and could see that the sun had well nigh run his
daily course. The ridge ascended gradually till it reached it greatest
elevation where the boy was standing, and here ended abruptly in a
promontory-like hill, which overlooked a wide sea of waving verdure far
below. The brow of the hill and the crest of the ridge were not so bare
of trees but that, here and there, a lofty oak tree might be seen; but
the face toward the East was much too steep and smooth to offer a
foothold for trees, being covered instead with a dense growth of low
bushes, whose twisted twigs and crisped leaves had, from a distance,
more the appearance of moss than of verdure.

Upon waking from his reverie, and turning to look behi