Then the guests began to ask him, “Tell us, soldier, why are you crying?”

“Why should I not cry? There is my own brother faring abroad and making merry, but he forgets me!”

Then the guests told the general of this; but the general was angry: “Do not believe him, he is an utter liar.” So he ordered him to be taken away from sentry-go, and to be given thirty blows with the cat, so that he should not dare to claim kinship.

This offended the soldier, so he put on undress uniform and decamped.

In some time, maybe long, maybe short, he found himself in a wood so wild, so dreamy, that he could not get out of it anywhere, and he began killing time and feeding on berries and roots.