He jumped, or rather fell off, and looked back up the road; it stretched white and straight through the dark wood, and not a living soul could be seen upon it.

He remounted, and rode back up the hill.

In ten minutes he came to where the road broke into four; there he dismounted and tried to remember which fork he had come down.
While he was deliberating a man passed, sitting sideways on a horse.
Harris stopped him, and explained to him that he had lost his wife.

The man appeared to be neither surprised nor sorry for him.

While they were talking another farmer came along, to whom the first man explained the matter, not as an accident, but as a good story.