That evening Rosil fell into a big pit. It was deep, and when he hit the bottom Rosil lost consciousness. When he came round he discovered he was black and blue with bruises. But this was not so bad compared to the fact that the prospect of getting out of the pit was poor, even negligible. When Rosil realised this, he succumbed to melancholy. He didn't even try to examine the walls to see if there was a way of climbing out. It was obvious to him that his liberty was at an end.
„I ought to have enjoyed life more," he reflected. At least he found as comfortable a seat as he could on a large boulder in the corner and leant against the sticky wall. He looked up at the clear sky that rippled from time to time with flocks of crows. Grief overwhelmed him. He remembered the gamekeeper who had warned against walking deep into the forest. He thought of his blunt wind-whipped face and was overcome with respect for the wise man who had seemed to sense the fate that Rosil would meet there.
„How much better is this man," thought Rosil, „than I. What a beautiful life he must live here in the purity of nature, free of all the deceits of life in the Town, and the guile I have mastered so well. How much better to remain with the ground under your feet like a gamekeeper, to delight in the scent of the forests, admire the red sun on the horizon, listen to the deer in the rutting season and in the evening feel blissfully tired after a job well done." He got up. Looked at the first star that twinkled in the sky.
"But I'm not a gamekeeper," he said gloomily. "I'm an oily careerist, and what's worse I'm in more than a bit of a hole."

While Rosil had been philosophising, the darkness had fallen on the forest. The soft hoofs of a doe approached the pit.
He looked up and saw the face of the doe in the silken light of the moon. The face was exquisite. The cold moonlight lent it an unearthly appearance and the sad, melancholy gaze seemed a commentary on Rosil's unhappy fate. Rosil sat as if nailed to the ground, all the more enthralled by spell-binding apparition because he saw in that face a harmony with his momentary frame of mind.
His current situation no longer appears to him as a wilful, malicious act of fate, but as a just punishment for his previous way of life. He feels as if chosen by fate to give a solo performance in the tragic music of the evening, to become the principal part of the sombre panorama of the forest, and as if the doe was an angel bringing him the tidings of this vocation. In the chill light of the moon, against the dramatic background of the murmuring crowns of the trees, his pit suddenly seemed to be the only suitable place where he could have found himself that evening. He grasped that it would have been inappropriate for him to have strolled along the paths, whistling cheerily with his pockets full of mushrooms, and he was even ashamed that he had ever intended to do such a thing.
The doe gazes at Rosil. It tilted its head a little. In that moment, however, the change of light lent its face a completely different expression. Now what stares down into the pit is a strange creature, not much resembling a doe, and moreover with a contemptuous grin at the corners of its mouth.
Rosil jumps up amazed. "Who are you? Was I wrong when I thought you sympathised with me? What perfidious grin has the glitter of the moon revealed? Ach yes! - Now I know beyond doubt that this face reminds me of someone, someone long lost in the depths of my memory!" he tried to bring the face to mind, but it kept escaping like a slippery fish. He put his head in his hands, and furiously raked his hair with his fingers. "Who are you? Who are you?"
The creature turned away towards the forest. It stood there for a while and sniffed at the wind. Then it trotted away.
The moon dropped behind the clouds.
Rosil sits on the boulder in the corner of the pit and goes on staring into the darkness.