Their progress was, however, slow, burdened with the care of the lame girl,
and heavily laden with the fish. The purple shades of twilight soon clouded
the scene, deepened by the heavy masses of foliage, which cast a greater
degree of obscurity upon their narrow path; for they had now left the
oak-flat and entered the gorge of the valley. The utter loneliness of the
path, the grotesque shadows of the trees, that stretched in long array
across the steep banks on either side, taking, now this, now that wild and
fanciful shape, awakened strange feelings of dread in the mind of these
poor forlorn wanderers; like most persons bred up in solitude, their
imaginations were strongly tinctured with superstitious fears. Here then,
in the lonely wilderness, far from their beloved parents and social hearth,
with no visible arm to protect them from danger, none to encourage or
to cheer them, can it be matter of surprise if they started with
terror-blanched cheeks at every fitful breeze that rustled the leaves or
waved the branches above them? The gay and lively Louis, blithe as any wild
bird in the bright sunlight, was the most easily oppressed by this strange
superstitious fear, when the shades of evening were closing round, and he
would start with ill-disguised terror at every sound or shape that met his
ear or eye, though the next minute he was the first to laugh at his own
weakness.
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