The
twilight deepened. The sky above showed turquoise blue between the
tall tree-tops, but the woods themselves grew blurred, dusky at a
little distance ahead. Even to a seasoned woodsman, twilight in a
timbered country that he does not know brings confusion; uncertainty
leads him far wide of his mark. Hazel, all unused to woods travel,
hurried the more, uneasy with the growing conviction that she had gone
astray.
The shadows deepened until she tripped over roots and stones, and
snagged her hair and clothing on branches she could not see in time to
fend off. As a last resort, she turned straight for the light patch
still showing in the northwest, hoping thus to cross the wagon road
that ran from Soda Creek to the Meadows--it lay west, and she had gone
northeast from town. And as she hurried, a fear began to tug at her
that she had passed the Meadows unknowingly. If she could only cross a
trail--trails always led somewhere, and she was going it blind. The
immensity of the unpeopled areas she had been looking out over for a
week appalled her.
Presently it was dark, and darkness in the woods is the darkness of the
pit itself. She found a fallen tree, and climbed on it to rest and
think.
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