ROBINSON CRUSOE. 133 to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might net be my fancy ; but there was no room for that, for there was ex- actly the print of a foot—toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How came it thither I knew not, nor could I in the least im- agine ; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my forti-, fication, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but ter- rified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be aman. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this), I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot remember ; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never frightened hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat. I slept none that night ; the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were, which is some- thing contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all.creatures in fear ; but I was so embar- rassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off. Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil, and reason joined in with me in. this supposition, for how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footstep? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then, to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not be sure I should see it,—this was an amazement the other way. I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot ; that as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon.a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this