The peddler realizes he has fallen into a rattrap when he gets lost in the forest after stealing the crofter’s money, feeling trapped by his own greed and misdeeds. Struggling to find his way out, he is haunted by the idea that the world, like a rattrap, has lured him with bait only to ensnare him. This moment of self-awareness symbolizes his entrapment in his own moral failings and emphasizes the story’s theme of life as a trap set by temptation and wrongdoing.