But the woods were deep and pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a trail by night.

To challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the forest, now here, now there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless daring,--a madman might do this for love.

But it was only Haward's fancy that had been touched, and if he lacked not courage, neither did he lack a certain cool good sense which divided for him the possible from that which was impossible, and therefore not to be undertaken.
Turning from the ruin, he walked across the trampled sward to the sugar-tree in whose shade, in the golden afternoon, he had sung to his companions and to a simple girl.

Idle and happy and far from harm had the valley seemed.
"Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather." Suddenly he found that he was trembling, and that a sensation of faintness and of dull and sick revolt against all things under the stars was upon him.

Sitting down in the shadow of the tree, he rested his face in his hands and shut his eyes, preferring the darkness within to that outer night which hid not and cared not, which was so coldly at peace.