The Devil tempted him in that moment.

He was on the point of answering, "Because she talked too much," but instead he climbed out of the wagon to walk.

He walked most of the three hundred miles in the next ten days.

Nights and mornings he falsely pretended to be deaf.
He found himself in this long walk full of a pained discouragement; not questioning or doubting, for he had been too well trained ever to do either.

But he was disturbed by a feeling of bafflement, as might be a ground-mole whose burrow was continually destroyed by an enemy it could not see.