With the rising of the sun, he crept
into a wayside hovel and lay there hidden for hours. Hunger and
thirst seemed like things which had passed him by. It was sleep
only which he craved, sleep and forgetfulness.
Dusk was falling again before he found himself upon his feet,
starting out once more upon this strangely thought-of pilgrimage.
This time he kept to the road, plodding along with tired,
dejected footsteps, which had in them still something of that
restless haste which drove him ceaselessly onward as though he
were indeed possessed of some unquiet spirit. He was recovering
now, however, a little of his natural common sense. He
remembered that he must have food and drink, and he sought them
from the wayside public-house like an ordinary traveler,
conquering without any apparent effort that first invincible
repugnance of his toward the face of any human being. Then on
again across this strange land of windmills and spreading plains,
until the darkness forced him to take shelter once more. That
night he slept like a child. With the morning, the fever had
passed from his blood. A great wind blew in his face even as he
opened his eyes, touched to wakefulness by the morning sun, a
wind that came booming over the level places, salt with the touch
of the ocean and fragrant with the perfume of many marsh plants.
He was coming toward the sea now, and within a very short
distance from where he had spent the night, he found a broad,
shining river stealing into the land.
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