go away. If I did not turn on my own heel when I went away, whose heel
would a lonely man like me turn upon?

Years rolled by. I did nothing to prevent it. Still that face came to me
in my lonely hut far up in the mountains. That look still rankled in my
memory. Before that my memory had been all right. Nothing had ever rankled
in it very much. Let the careless reader who never had his memory rankle
in hot weather, pass this by. This story is not for him.

After our first conversation we did not meet again for three years, and
then by the merest accident. I had been out for a whole afternoon, hunting
an elderly goat that had grown childish and irresponsible. He had wandered
away, and for several days I had been unable to find him. So I sought for
him till darkness found me several miles from my cabin. I realized at once
that I must hurry back, or lose my way and spend the night in the
mountains. The darkness became more rapidly obvious. My way became more
and more uncertain.

Finally I fell down an old prospect shaft. I then resolved to remain where
I was until I could decide what was best to be done. If I had known that
the prospect shaft was there, I would have gone another way. There was
another way that I could have gone, but it did not occur to me until too
late.

I hated to spend the next few weeks in the shaft, for I had not locked up
my cabin when I left it, and I feared that someone might get in while I
was absent and play on the piano. I had also set a batch of bread and two
hens that morning, and all of these would be in sad knead of me before I
could get my business into such shape that I could return.