YET WAVERS AGAIN, 218

doors but some barley cakes and water. Then I knew that my
goats wanted to be milked, too, which usually was my evening
diversion; and the poor creatures were in great pain and incon-
venience for want of it: and, indeed, it almost spoiled some of
them, and almost dried up their milk.

Heartening myself therefore with the belief that this was nothing
but the print of one of my own feet, and so I might be truly said
to start at my own shadow, I began to go abroad again, and went
to my country house to milk my flock; but to see with what fear
T went forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready
every now and then to lay down my basket and run for my life, if
would have made any one have thought I was haunted with au
evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted,
and so indeed I had.

However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having
seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was
really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I could not
persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore
again and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and
see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured
it was my own foot. But when I came to the place, First, It ap-
peared evidently to me that when I laid up my boat I could not
possibly be on shore anywhere thereabout. Secondly, When I came
to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so
large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new
lnaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree :
so that I shook with cold like one in an ague. And I went home
again, filled with the belief that some man or men had been on
shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and that I
might be surprised before I was aware—and what course to take
for my security I knew not.

Oh, what ridiculous resolution men take when possessed with
fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason
offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was to
throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into
the woods, that the enemy might not find them, and then frequent
the island in prospect of the same or the like booty; then to the