He left the shack, took a left turn down the hill until he came upon a road, only notable as such thanks to a fence demarcating where it met a farmer’s field and the wet slush that had furrowed into the snow from the passing of a wagon earlier that morning. He went to the landlord’s house the next hill over. On a whim, he picked up a rather long and gnarled-looking tree branch off of the ground, tore away the twigs and smaller branches attached, and made it into a walking staff.