text:  Thus galloped I through hill and dale through bush and brier unquestioned and almost unseen; until on the evening of the fourth day as I plunged into a forest which for the last half hour I had been imagining into a scene of fairyland a bower where a pilgrim might finish his journey for life or a man "crazed by care or crossed in hopeless love " might forget woman and woe together--I was awakened to the realities of things by the whistle of a bullet which struck off a branch within an inch of my head followed by a fierce howl for the countersign