in a kind of thoroughfare, though one for the nefarious, he felt bolder
and more hopeful about reaching a desirable goal.

He did not pause to think, as he continued, choosing, where there was a
bifurcation, the most trampled corridor, hewn originally by the miners'
pick. But he had much on his mind for future elaboration. Heretofore no
man could have lived a less eventful life, passed among books, globes,
drawing tools and lecture notes. In a few hours the change was great.
The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his
wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from
justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were
the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular
friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were
awaiting him--and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced
across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to
point out the safe retreat.

But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his
security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the
true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the
earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and
bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues
familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his
university education proved faulty.

A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more
hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in
houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of
creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is
true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One