subtle glue
leaped between them, and they would no more come separate. The wind
among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes
together with a steady, even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it
would swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would
patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night
after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this
perturbing concert of the wind among the woods, but whether it was a
difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was
myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind
sang to a different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and
hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and
subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was to
listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of wonder at
the foreign clamour in my ears.

Twice in the course of the dark hours--once when a stone galled me
underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient Modestine, growing
angry, pawed and stamped upon the road--I was recalled for a brief while
to consciousness, and saw a star or two overhead, and the lace-like edge
of the foliage against the sky. When I awoke for the third time
(Wednesday, September 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light,
the mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the
ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied
to a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of
inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over
the experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and
pleasant it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which
annoyed me would not have been there had I not been forced to camp
blindfold in the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience
except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of
Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert" among the mixed contents of my
sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened
with unusually lightsome and clear sensations.

With that I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and,
breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see
in what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and
with a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray.