Murlock and his wife carve a clearing out of a vast forest in an attempt to make a new life for themselves. The giant wooded region, however, has other plans.

The area’s first human settlers quickly moved on, either seeking even more remote frontiers or perhaps running from a forest that strikes fear into the hearts of human intruders. Although Murlock and his bride are “young, strong and full of hope” (Paragraph 5), we expect them to pick up stakes also, but instead tragedy strikes, a disaster that points to the dangers of life in the wilderness.

Bierce’s natural world humbles its optimistic human beings, serving up a series of terrible stresses that overwhelm the hardiest of souls. A fever overtakes Murlock’s wife while he’s away; when he returns home, he finds her in a delirium. Far from medical help, he has no way of evaluating or mitigation whatever infection she has contracted. The illness—an aspect of the wild and unpredictable natural world—takes it course until Murlock’s wife is comatose. Thinking her dead, he prepares her body for burial—and the natural world intrudes once again as a

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