How did the seller of rattraps realize that he himself was caught up in a rattrap after he left the crofter’s cottage?

After the peddler stole thirty kronors from the crofter’s house, he realized that he not continue on the public highway, but must turn off the road into the woods. During the first few hours, this caused him no difficulty. Later in the day, it became worse, for it was a big and confusing forest which he had gotten into. He tried to be sure to walk in a definite direction, but the paths twisted back and forth so strangely. He walked on, without coming to the end of the wood and finally, he realized that he had only been walking around in the same part of the forest. All at once, he recalled his thoughts about the world and the rattrap. Now his own turn had come. He had let himself be fooled by a bait and had been caught. The whole forest, with its trunks and branches, its thickets and fallen logs, closed on him like an impenetrable prison from which he could never escape.