"In God's name!" he said, as he settled himself on his pine bed. I fell
asleep at once, and for some time slept deeply. But during the night
restlessness seized on the man again. "Peace be with you!" I heard him
mutter as he crawled out of the hut.

In the morning I burned the man's bed of pine needles; it made a lively
fire of crackling pine in the hut.

Outside, the ground was covered with new-fallen snow.




III


There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with
oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to
think idly and slowly as one does it.

There, now I'll fill the kettle with snow, I think, and now I'm crushing
the coffee beans with a stone; later I must beat my sleeping bag well in
the snow and get the wool white again. There is nothing in this of
literature or great novels or public opinion; does it matter? But then I
haven't been toiling just to get this coffee into my life. Literature?
When Rome ruled the world, she was no more than Greece's apprentice in
literature. Yet Rome ruled the world. Let us look too at another country
we know: it fought a war of independence the glory of which still shines,
and it brought forth the greatest school of painting in the world. Yet it