A sort of childish happiness possessed me.
After three days of imminent peril, to be free was to be in fairyland.
To be swishing through the long bracken or plunging among the breast-high flowers of the meadowlands in a world of essential lights and fragrances, seemed scarcely part of mortal experience.

Remember that I was little more than a lad, and that I had faced death so often of late that my mind was all adrift.

To be able to hope once more, nay, to be allowed to cease both from hope and fear, was like a deep and happy opiate to my senses.

Spent and frail as I was, my soul swam in blessed waters of ease.
The mood did not last long.

I came back to earth with a shock, as the schimmel stumbled at the crossing of a stream.