It wasn’t until we were outside in the biting cold, with the wind searching out all the gaps in my threadbare old cloak and lashing my hair across my eyes, that I thought: what am I going to do? Am I going to run away with them, or am I going to go back and pretend that I know nothing about it?

After some time we rounded a corner in the road and came to a fork. One branch led down to the village and over the bridge to the square—half an hour’s easy walk, with lighted windows at the end of it, singing from the tavern, and the church snoozing dimly under a snowy quilt. The other branch of the road led along the side of the valley, to a pass where, at this time of year, the snow was too deep for travelers. I hesitated for a second or two as we stood at the fork, for the village looked so welcoming; and then the moon came out from behind a shark-shaped cloud and lit up the rocky wildness of the landscape. And I turned away from the village, for the moonlight showed me a glimpse of the place we were heading for.

High up on the slope to our right, in among the trees, a little frozen waterfall glinted brilliantly. A short way beyond it, as I knew very well, was a cave—the hermit’s cave, we used to call it, because many years ago there’d lived a poor old man in there, a gentle mad soul who used to talk to himself all day long, believing himself to be a dancing bear who for the love of the Virgin Mary had given up entertaining folks and taken to praying for them instead; but who still needed commanding, like a bear, so he’d say, “Good boy, Bruno, on your knees now, pray, that’s a good bear—fold your paws—shut your eyes—there’s a good bear—up you get, then….” We used to take him honey-cakes once in a while, which he’d feed to himself as a reward for praying well, and then in his old bear’s shuffle he’d lumber forward and slump to his knees beside us and lick our hands gently, telling himself to pray for us….The sweetest souls in the world are those that aren’t fully in it. I thought: old Bruno’ll look after us. I meant his spirit, of course, since he’d died when I was seven.

“This way,” I said, and we took the upper road.