Some hours later, in the dusk of the evening, Felix stole from the spot, skirting the forest like a wild animal afraid to venture from its cover, till he reached the track which led to Aisi.  His one idea was to reach his canoe.  He would have gone through the woods, but that was not possible.  Without axe or wood-knife to hew a way, the tangled brushwood he knew to be impassable, having observed how thick it was when coming.  Aching and trembling in every limb, not so much with physical suffering as that kind of inward fever which follows unmerited injury, the revolt of the mind against it, he followed the track as fast as his weary frame would let him.  He had tasted nothing that day but the draught from the king’s cup, and a second draught when he recovered consciousness, from the stream that flowed past the camp.  Yet he walked steadily on without pause; his head hung forward, and his arms were listless, but his feet mechanically plodded on.  He walked, indeed, by his will, and not with his sinews.  Thus, like a ghost, for there was no life in him, he traversed the shadowy forest.

The dawn came, and still he kept onwards.  As the sun rose higher, having now travelled fully twenty miles, he saw houses on the right of the trail.  They were evidently those of retainers or workmen employed on the manor, for a castle stood at some distance.

An hour later he approached the second or open city of Aisi, where the ferry was across the channel.  In his present condition he could not pass through the town.  No one there knew of his disgrace, but it was the same to him as if they had.  Avoiding the town itself, he crossed the cultivated fields, and upon arriving at the channel he at once stepped in, and swam across to the opposite shore.  It was not more than sixty yards, but, weary as he was, it was an exhausting effort.  He sat down, but immediately got up and struggled on.

The church tower on the slope of the hill was a landmark by which he easily discovered the direction of the spot where he had hidden the canoe.  But he felt unable to push through the belt of brushwood, reeds, and flags beside the shore, and therefore struck through the firs, following a cattle track, which doubtless led to another grazing ground.  This ran parallel with the shore, and when he judged himself about level with the canoe he left it, and entered the wood itself.  For a little way he could walk, but the thick fir branches soon blocked his progress, and he could progress only on hands and knees, creeping beneath them.  There was a hollow space under the lower branches free from brushwood.

Thus he painfully approached the Lake, and descending the hill, after an hour’s weary work emerged among the rushes and reeds.  He was within two hundred yards of the canoe, for he recognised the island opposite it.  In ten minutes he found it undisturbed and exactly as he had left it, except that the breeze had strewn the dry reeds with which it was covered with willow leaves, yellow and dead (they fall while all the rest are green), which had been whirled from the branches.  Throwing himself upon the reeds beside the canoe, he dropped asleep as if he had been dead.