Maybe I had proved so many of her tales to be but pretence that, as I began to think for myself, I deemed them all to be so.
But now I was lost in the forest, and what had been a playground was become a vast and desolate land for me, and all the things that I had ever heard of what dangers lurked within it, came back to my mind.

I remembered that the grey wolf's skin on which I slept had come hence, and I minded the calf that the pack had slain close to the village a year ago, and I thought of the girl who went mazed and useless about the place, having lost her wits through being pixy led, as they said, long ago.

The warnings seemed to me to be true enough, now that all the old landmarks were lost to me, and all the tracks were buried under the crisp snow.

I did not know when I had left the road from the village to the hilltop, or in which direction it lay.
It was very silent in the aisles of the great beech trunks, for the herds were in shelter.

There was no sound of the swineherds' horn, though the evening was coming on, and but for the frost it was time for their charges to be taken homeward, and the woodmen's axes were idle.