The very last house stood all by itself under a dark green wall of fir-trees, and here the wild country really began. Snufkin walked faster and faster straight into the forest. Then the door of the last house opened a chink and a very old voice cried: ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I don’t know,’ Snufkin replied.
The door shut again and Snufkin entered his forest, with a hundred miles of silence ahead of him.