legs, like one possessed, in violent, childish fury. Then, worn out, I
let my arms and legs rest; at last, tired, swallowed up in my
helplessness, left without will or feeling, I waited for what was to
come. I had terribly wicked thoughts: of escaping from the house, of
setting fire to the house, of _murder_! I was an outcast, I was being
tortured. I should have liked to show them what I could do, who I was; to
see them hunting for me and crying; and then to run away, always farther
away, and never come back again.

Downstairs, the plates and forks were clattering for supper. I was not
hungry; I did not wish nor mean to eat. I heard soft, quiet voices
talking: that made me desperate; they were not speaking of me! They had
no thought nor care for the miscreant; they would liefst have him dead,
out of the way. And I was in the loft!

Later, very much later, I heard my little brother's voice saying evening
prayers--I would not pray--and then I heard nothing more, nothing; and I
lay there, upstairs, lonely and forlorn....

I walked all alone in the forest, through the brushwood. 'Twas half-dark
below; but, above the bushes, the sun was playing as through a green
curtain. I went on and on. The bushes here grew thick now and the tiny
path was lost. After long creeping and stumbling, I leapt across a ditch
and entered the wide drove. It did not seem strange to me that 'twas even
darker here and that the light, instead of from above, came streaming low
down from between the trunks of the trees. The vault was closed
leaf-tight and the trunks hung down from out of it like pillars. 'Twas
silent all around. I went, as I thought that I must see the sun, round
behind the trunks, half anxious at last to get out of that magic forest;
but new trees kept coming up, as though out of the ground, and hid the