正在床上酣睡。但守林人却无法入眠。他关好鸡笼，在林中巡视一番，便回家吃晚饭。但晚饭过后，他却不打算睡觉。反而坐在壁炉边陷入沉思。

He thought of his boyhood in Tevershall, and of his five or six years of married life. He thought of his wife, and always bitterly. She had seemed so brutal. But he had not seen her now since 1915, in the spring when he joined up. Yet there she was, not three miles away, and more brutal than ever. He hoped never to see her again while he lived.

他回忆起自己在特弗沙尔的童年时光，还有持续五六年的婚姻生活。他想起自己的妻子，这让他痛苦不堪。她是那样蛮横无理。好在他1915年春天入伍后，再未与那泼妇谋面。但她就在那里，住在不足三英里外的地方，剽悍的程度犹胜以往。他希望有生之年再别与她碰面。

He thought of his life abroad, as a soldier. India, Egypt, then India again: the blind, thoughtless life with the horses: the colonel who had loved him and whom he had loved: the several years that he had been an officer, a lieutenant with a very fair chance of being a captain. Then the death of the colonel from pneumonia, and his own narrow escape from death: his damaged health: his deep restlessness: his leaving the army and coming back to England to be a working man again.

他想起自己海外从军的经历。从印度到埃及，再回到印度，与马为伍的生活无需多想其他事情。上校对他欣赏有加，他也对上校极为崇敬。数载军官生涯，他担当中尉，并极有希望被提拔成上尉。之后，上校死于肺炎，他自己也险些性命不保，健康受损，心绪不宁，因此他告别行伍，回转英格兰，再度沦为劳工。

He was temporizing with life. He had thought he would be safe, at least for a time, in this wood. There was no shooting as yet: he had to rear the pheasants. He would have no guns to serve. He would be alone, and apart from life, which was all he wanted. He had to have some sort of a background. And this was his native place. There was even his mother, though she had never meant very much to him. And he could go on in life, existing from day to day, without connexion and without hope. For he did not know what to do with himself.

他在蹉跎岁月。他曾认为，隐藏在这片树林里，至少能够保一时无忧。狩猎期尚未到来，他只需饲养野鸡。不必侍候围猎的贵族老爷。他孑然独居，远离尘嚣，而这也是他梦寐以求的。他需要安身立命之所。而这里是他的故乡。甚至他的母亲也住在此地，虽然两人的感情相当淡漠。而他可以继续生存下去，日复一日，无牵无挂，无欲无求。因为他已经失去人生的目标。

He did not know what to do with himself. Since he had been an officer for some years, and had mixed among the other officers and civil servants, w