Hans of Iceland, Vol. 2 of 2

There is something desolate and forbidding in the aspect of a bare, flat region when the sun has set, when one is alone; when, as he walks, he tramples the dry grass beneath his feet, the dead brown leaves drop rustling from the trees, he hears the monotonous cry of{10} the cricket, and sees huge, shapeless clouds sink slowly on the horizon like dead ghosts.

Such were Ordener’s gloomy reflections on the night of his vain encounter with the Iceland robber. Startled by his abrupt disappearance, he at first tried to pursue him; but he lost his way in the heather, and wandered all day through a wild and uncultivated country, where he found no trace of man. At nightfall he was in a vast plain stretching to the horizon on every side, where there seemed no hope of shelter for the young traveller exhausted by fatigue and hunger.