We had a “soft spell” over a week end, and on Monday it had been
followed by a fearful storm--snowstorm and blizzard, both coming from
the southeast and lasting their traditional three days before they
subsided. On Thursday, a report came in that the trail across the wild
land west of Bell’s corner was closed completely--in fact, would be
impassable for the rest of the winter. This report came with the air
of authority; the man who brought it knew what he was talking about;
of that I had no doubt. For the time being, he said, no horses could
possibly get through.
That very day I happened to meet another man who was habitually driving
back and forth between the two towns. “Why don’t you go west?” he said.
“You angle over anyway. Go west first and then straight north.” And he
described in detail the few difficulties of the road which he followed
himself. There was no doubt, he of all men should certainly know which
was the best road for the first seventeen miles. He had come in from
that one-third-way town that morning. I knew the trails which he
described as summer-roads, had gone over them a good many times, though
never in winter; so, the task of finding the trail should not offer any
difficulty. Well and good, then; I made up my mind to follow the advice.
On Friday afternoon everything was ready as usual. I rang off at four
o’clock and stepped into the hall. And right there the first thing went
wrong.
Never before had I been delayed in my start. But now there stood
three men in the hall, prominent citizens of the town. I had handed
my resignation to the school-board; these men came to ask me that I
reconsider. The board, so I had heard, was going to accept my decision
and let it go at that. According to this committee the board did not
represent the majority of the citizens in town. They argued for some
time against my stubbornness. At last, fretting under the delay, I put
it bluntly. “I have nothing to reconsider, gentlemen. The matter does
no longer rest with me. If, as I hear, the board is going to accept my
resignation, that settles the affair for me. It must of necessity suit
me or I should not have resigned. But you might see the board. Maybe
they are making a mistake. In fact, I think so. That is not my business,
however.” And I went.
The time was short enough in any case; this cut it shorter. It was five
o’clock before I swung out on the western road. I counted on moonlight,
though, the fickle luminary being in its first quarter. But there were
clouds in the north and the weather was by no means settled. As for
my lights, they were useless for driving so long as the ground was
completely buried under its sheet of snow. On the snow there form no
shadows by which you can recognize the trail in a light that comes from
between the two tracks. So I hurried along.
We had not yet made the first three miles, skirting meanwhile the river,
when the first disaster came. I noticed a rather formidable drift on the
road straight ahead. I thought I saw a trail leading up over it--I found
later on that it was a snowshoe trail. I drove briskly up to its very
edge; then the horses fell into a walk. In a gingerly kind of way we
started to climb. And suddenly the world seemed to fall to pieces. The
horses disappeared in the snow, the cutter settled down, there was a
sharp snap, I fell back--the lines had broken. With lightning quickness
I reached over the dashboard down to the whiffletrees and unhooked one
each of the horses’ traces. That would release the others, too, should
they plunge. For the moment I did not know what they were doing. There
was a cloud of dust dry snow which hid them. Then Peter emerged. I saw
with horror that he stood on Dan who was lying on his side. Dan started
to roll over; Peter slipped off to the right. That brought rebellion
into Dan, for now the neck yoke was cruelly twisting his head. I saw
Dan’s feet emerging out of the snow, pawing the air: he was on his back.
Everything seemed convulsed. Then Peter plunged and reared, pulling Dan
half-ways up; that motion of his released the neck yoke from the pole.
The next moment both horses were on their feet, head by head now, but
facing each other, apparently trying to pull apart; but the martingales
held. Then both jumped clear of the cutter and the pole; and they
plunged out, to the rear, past the cutter, to solid ground.
I do not remember how I got out; but after a minute or so I stood at
their heads, holding them by the bridles. The knees of both horses
shook, their nostrils trembled; Peter’s eye looked as if he were going
to bolt. We were only a hundred yards or so from a farm. A man and a
boy came running with lanterns. I snapped the halter ropes into the bit
rings and handed the horses over to the boy to be led to and fro at a
walk so as to prevent a chill; and I went with the man to inspect the
cutter. Apparently no damage was done beyond the snapping of the lines.
The man, who knew me, offered to lend me another pair, which I promptly
accepted. We pulled the cutter out backwards, straightened the harness,
and hitched the horses up again. It was clear that, though they did not
seem to be injured, their nerves were on edge.
The farmer meanwhile enlightened me. I mentioned the name of the man
who had recommended the road. Yes, the road was good enough from town to
town. This was the only bad drift. Yes, my adviser had passed here the
day before; but he had turned off the road, going down to the river
below, which was full of holes, it is true, made by the ice-harvesters,
but otherwise safe enough. The boy would go along with his lantern to
guide me to the other side of the drift. I am afraid I thought some
rather uncharitable things about my adviser for having omitted to
caution me against this drift. What I minded most, was, of course, the
delay.
The drift was partly hollow, it appeared; the crust had thawed and
frozen again; the huge mass of snow underneath had settled down. The
crust had formed a vault, amply strong enough to carry a man, but not to
carry horse and cutter.
When in the dying light and by the gleam of the lantern we went through
the dense brush, down the steep bank, and on to the river, the horses
were every second ready to bolt. Peter snorted and danced, Dan laid his
ears back on his head. But the boy gave warning at every open hole, and
we made it safely. At last we got back to the road, I kept talking and
purring to the horses for a while, and it seemed they were quieting
down.
It was not an auspicious beginning for a long night-drive. And though
for a while all things seemed to be going about as well as I could
wish, there remained a nervousness which, slight though it seemed while
unprovoked, yet tinged every motion of the horses and even my own state
of mind. Still, while we were going west, and later, north into the
one-third-way town, the drive was one of the most marvellously beautiful
ones that I had had during that winter of marvellous sights.
As I have mentioned, the moon was in its first quarter and, therefore,
during the early part of the night high in the sky. It was not very
cold; the lower air was quiet, of that strange, hushed stillness
which in southern countries is the stillness of the noon hour in
midsummer--when Pan is frightened into a panic by the very quiet. It was
not so, however, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It was a night
of skies, of shifting, ever changing skies. Not for five minutes did an
aspect last. When I looked up, after maybe having devoted my attention
for a while to a turn in the road or to a drift, there was no trace left
of the picture which I had seen last. And you could not help it, the
sky would draw your eye. There was commotion up there--operations were
proceeding on a very vast scale, but so silently, with not a whisper of
wind, that I felt hushed myself.
A few of the aspects have persisted in my memory, but it seems an
impossible task to sketch them.
I was driving along through open fields. The trail led dimly ahead. Huge
masses of snow with sharp, immovable shadows flanked it. The horses were
very wide awake. They cocked their ears at every one of the mounds; and
sometimes they pressed rump against rump, as if to reassure each other
by their mutual touch.
About halfway up from the northern horizon there lay a belt of faintest
luminosity in the atmosphere--no play of northern lights--just an
impalpable paling of the dark blue sky. There were stars, too, but
they were not very brilliant. Way down in the north, at the edge of
the world, there lay a long, low-flung line of cloud, black, scarcely
discernible in the light of the moon. And from its centre, true north,
there grew out a monstrous human arm, reaching higher and higher, up to
the zenith, blotting the stars behind it. It looked at first--in texture
and rigid outline--as the stream of straw looks that flows from the
blower of a threshing machine when you stand straight in its line and
behind it. But, of course, it did not curve down. It seemed to stretch
and to rise, growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at its
end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This cloud, I have no
doubt, was forming right then by condensation. And it stretched and
lengthened till it obscured the moon.
Just then I reached the end of my run to the west. I was nearing a block
of dense poplar bush in which somewhere two farmsteads lay embedded. The
road turned to the north. I was now exactly south of and in line with
that long, twenty-mile trail where I had startled horses, rabbit, and
partridge on the last described drive. I believe I was just twenty-five
miles from the northern correction line. At this corner where I turned I
had to devote all my attention to the negotiating of a few bad drifts.
When I looked up again, I was driving along the bottom of a wide road
gap formed by tall and stately poplars on both sides--trees which stood
uncannily still. The light of the moon became less dim, and I raised my
eyes. That band of cloud--for it had turned into a band now, thus losing
its threatening aspect--had widened out and loosened up. It was a strip
of flocculent, sheepy-looking, little cloudlets that suggested curliness
and innocence. And the moon stood in between like a goodnatured shepherd
in the stories of old.
For a while I kept my eyes on the sky. The going was good indeed on this
closed-in road. And so I watched that insensible, silent, and yet swift
shifting of things in the heavens that seemed so orderly, pre-ordained,
and as if regulated by silent signals. The clouds lost their sheeplike
look again; they became more massive; they took on more substance and
spine, more manliness, as it were; and they arranged themselves in
distinct lines. Soldiers suggested themselves, not soldiers engaged in
war, but soldiers drilling in times of peace, to be reviewed, maybe, by
some great general. That central point from which the arm had sprung and
which had been due north had sidled over to the northwest; the low-flung
line along the horizon had taken on the shape of a long wedge pointing
east; farther west it, too, looked more massive now--more like a
rather solid wall. And all those soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped
formation--into lines radiating from that common central point in the
northwest. This arrangement I have for many years been calling
“the tree.” It is quite common, of course, and I read it with great
confidence as meaning “no amount of rain or snow worth mentioning.” “The
tree” covered half the heavens or more, and nowhere did I see any large
reaches of clear sky. Here and there a star would peep through, and
the moon seemed to be quickly and quietly moving through the lines.
Apparently he was the general who reviewed the army.
Again there came a shifting in the scenes. It looked as if some unseen
hands were spreading a sheet above these flocculent clouds--a thin and
vapoury sheet that came from the north and gradually covered the whole
roof of the sky. Stars and moon disappeared; but not, so far, the
light of the moon; it merely became diffused--the way the light from an
electric bulb becomes diffused when you enclose it in a frosted globe.
And then, as the sheet of vapour above began to thicken, the light on
the snow became dim and dimmer, till the whole of the landscape lay in
gloom. The sheet still seemed to be coming, coming from the north. But
no longer did it travel away to the south. It was as if it had brought
up against an obstacle there, as if it were being held in place. And
since there was more and more of it pressing up--it seemed rather to be
pushed now--it telescoped together and threw itself into folds, till
at last the whole sky looked like an enormous system of parallel
clothes-lines over all of which one great, soft, and loose cloth
were flung, so that fold after fold would hang down between all the
neighbouring pairs of lines; and between two folds there would be a
sharply converging, upward crease. It being night, this arrangement,
common in grey daylight, would not have shown at all, had it not been
for the moon above. As it was, every one of the infolds showed an
increasingly lighter grey the higher it folded up, and like huge, black
udders the outfolds were hanging down. This sky, when it persists,
I have often found to be followed within a few days by heavy storms.
To-night, however, it did not last. Shifting skies are never certain
signs, though they normally indicate an unsettled condition of the
atmosphere. I have observed them after a blizzard, too.
I looked back over my shoulder, just when I emerged from the bush into
the open fields. And there I became aware of a new element again.
A quiet and yet very distinct commotion arose from the south. These
cloth-clouds lifted, and a nearly impalpable change crept over the
whole of the sky. A few minutes later it crystallised into a distinct
impression. A dark grey, faintly luminous, inverted bowl stood overhead.
Not a star was to be seen above, nor yet the moon. But all around the
horizon there was a nearly clear ring, suffused with the light of the
moon. There, where the sky is most apt to be dark and hazy, stars peeped
out--singly and dimly only--I did not recognize any constellation.
And then the grey bowl seemed to contract into patches. Again the
change seemed to proceed from the south. The clouds seemed to lift still
higher, and to shrink into small, light, feathery cirrus clouds, silvery
on the dark blue sky--resembling white pencil shadings. The light of the
moon asserted itself anew. And this metamorphosis also spread upward,
till the moon herself looked out again, and it went on spreading
northward till it covered the whole of the sky.
This last change came just before I had to turn west again for a mile or
so in order to hit a trail into town. I did not mean to go on straight
ahead and to cut across those radiating road lines of which I have
spoken in a former paper. I knew that my wife would be sitting up and
waiting till midnight or two o’clock, and I wanted to make it. So I
avoided all risks and gave my attention to the road for a while. I had
to drive through a ditch and through a fence beyond, and to cross a
field in order to strike that road which led from the south through the
park into town. A certain farmstead was my landmark. Beyond it I had to
watch out sharply if I wanted to find the exact spot where according to
my informant the wire of the fence had been taken down. I found it.
To cross the field proved to be the hardest task the horses had had so
far during the night. The trail had been cut in deep through knee-high
drifts, and it was filled with firmly packed, freshly blown-in snow.
That makes a particularly bad road for fast driving. I simply had to
take my time and to give all my attention to the guiding of the horses.
And here I was also to become aware once more of the fact that my horses
had not yet forgotten their panic in that river drift of two hours ago.
There was a strawstack in the centre of the field; at least the shape of
the big, white mound suggested a strawstack; and the trail led closely
by it. Sharp shadows showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began
to dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along its southern edge.
But we made it. By the time we reached the park that forms the approach
to the town from the south, the skies had changed completely. There
was now, as far as my eye would reach, just one vast, dark-blue,
star-spangled expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the
earth with a veritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar
stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do
not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year--as, for
instance, Vega’s smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or
the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.
I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a narrow
bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both sides, makes the stars
seem brighter than they appear from the open fields. I have heard that
you can see a star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit if
it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make my impression less
improbable, perhaps. I know that not often have the stars seemed so much
alive to me as they did that night in the park.
And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five minutes, fed
the horses, had supper myself, and hitched up again.
On leaving town I went for another mile east in the shelter of a fringe
of bush; and this bush kept rustling as if a breeze had sprung up. But
it was not till I turned north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I
became conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was indeed a
slight breeze, coming from the north, and it felt very moist. Somehow it
felt homely and human, this breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a
time, not too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the trees
and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in delicate buds. So far,
however, its more immediate promise probably was snow.
But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up. Between the two
there was a distinct lull. And again there arose in the north, far away,
at the very end of my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder
wind that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts, with short
lulls in between; it still had that water-laden feeling, but it was now
what you would call “damp” rather than “moist”--the way you often feel
winter-winds along the shores of great lakes or along sea-coasts. There
was a cutting edge to it--it was “raw” And it had not been blowing very
long before low-hanging, dark, and formless cloud-masses began to scud
up from the north to the zenith. The northern lights, too, made their
appearance again about that time. They formed an arc very far to the
south, vaulting up behind my back, beyond the zenith. No streamers in
them, no filtered rays and streaks--nothing but a blurred luminosity
high above the clouds and--so it seemed--above the atmosphere. The
northern lights have moods, like the clouds--moods as varied as
theirs--though they do not display them so often nor quite so
ostentatiously.
We were nearing the bridge across the infant river. The road from the
south slopes down to this bridge in a rather sudden, s-shaped curve,
as perhaps the reader remembers. I still had the moonlight from time to
time, and whenever one of the clouds floated in front of the crescent,
I drove more slowly and more carefully. Now there is a peculiar thing
about moonlight on snow. With a fairly well-marked trail on bare ground,
in summertime, a very little of it will suffice to indicate the road,
for there are enough rough spots on the best of trails to cast little
shadows, and grass and weeds on both sides usually mark the beaten track
off still more clearly, even though the road lead north. But the snow
forms such an even expanse, and the trail on it is so featureless
that these signs are no longer available. The light itself also is too
characterless and too white and too nearly of the same quality as the
light reflected by the snow to allow of judging distances delicately and
accurately. You seem to see nothing but one vast whiteness all around.
When you drive east or west, the smooth edges of the tracks will cast
sharply defined shadows to the north, but when you drive north or south,
even these shadows are absent, and so you must entirely rely on your
horses to stay on the trail. I have often observed how easily my own
judgment was deluded.
But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know when I approached
the bridge that, perhaps through overconfidence, I was caught napping.
There was another fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at
the time. I have mentioned that we had had a “soft spell.” In fact, it
had been so warm for a day or two that the older snow had completely
iced over. Now, much as I thought I was watching out, we were suddenly
and quite unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even
realized that we were near it.
As I said, on this slope the trail described a double curve, and it hit
the bridge at an angle from the west. The first turn and the behaviour
of the horses were what convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too
far. If I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope began and
then started them downward at a slow walk, we should still have reached
the bridge at too great a speed; for the slope had offered the last big
wind from the north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow,
thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that had drifted from
the south, on the other hand, had been thrown beyond the river, on
to the lower northern bank; the horses skidded, and the weight of the
cutter would have pushed them forward. As it was, they realized the
danger themselves; for when we turned the second curve, both of them
stiffened their legs and spread their feet in order to break the
momentum of the cutter; but in spite of the heavy calks under their
shoes they slipped on all fours, hardly able to make the bend on to the
bridge.
They had to turn nearly at right angles to their last direction, and
the bridge seemed to be one smooth sheet of ice. The moon shone brightly
just then; so I saw exactly what happened. As soon as the runners
hit the iced-over planks, the cutter swung out sideways; the horses,
however, slipping and recovering, managed to make the turn. It was a
worth-while sight to see them strike their calks into the ice and brace
themselves against the shock which they clearly expected when the cutter
started to skid. The latter swung clear of the bridge--you will remember
that the railing on the east-side was broken away--out into space, and
came down with a fearful crash, but right side up, on the steep north
bank of the river--just at the very moment when the horses reached the
deep, loose snow beyond which at least gave them a secure footing. They
had gone along the diagonal of the bridge, from the southwest corner,
barely clearing the rail, to the northwest corner where the snow had
piled in to a depth of from two to five feet on the sloping bank. If
the ground where I hit the bank had been bare, the cutter would have
splintered to pieces; as it was, the shock of it seemed to jar every
bone in my body.
It seemed rather a piece of good luck that the horses bolted; the lines
held; they pulled me free of the drift on the bank and plunged out on
the road. For a mile or two we had a pretty wild run; and this time
there was no doubt about it, either, the horses were thoroughly
frightened. They ran till they were exhausted, and there was no holding
them; but since I was on a clear road, I did not worry very much.
Nevertheless, I was rather badly shaken up myself; and if I had followed
the good advice that suggested itself, I should have put in for some
time at the very next farm which I passed. The way I see things now,
it was anything rather than safe to go on. With horses in the nervous
condition in which mine were I could not hope any longer to keep them
under control should a further accident happen. But I had never yet
given in when I had made up my mind to make the trip, and it was hard to
do so for the first time.
As soon as I had the horses sufficiently in hand again, I lighted my
lantern, got out on the road, and carefully looked my cutter over. I
found that the hardwood lining of both runners was broken at the curve,
but the steel shoes were, though slightly bent, still sound. Fortunately
the top had been down, otherwise further damage would have been sure to
result. I saw no reason to discontinue the drive.
Now after a while--when the nervousness incident upon the shock which
I had received subsided--my interest in the shifting skies revived once
more, and again I began to watch the clouds. The wind was squally, and
the low, black vapour-masses overhead had coalesced into a vast array of
very similar but yet distinct groups. There was still a certain amount
of light from the moon, but only just enough to show the texture and the
grouping of the clouds. Hardly ever had I seen, or at least consciously
taken note of a sky that with its blackness and its massed multitudes of
clouds looked so threatening, so sinister, so much like a battle-array.
But way up in the northeast there were two large areas quite suffused
with light from the north. They must have been thin cloud-layers in
whose upper reaches the northern lights were playing. And these patches
of light were like a promise, like a word of peace arresting the battle.
Had it not been for these islands of light, I should have felt depressed
when I looked back to the road.
We were swinging along as before. I had rested the horses by a walk,
and to a casual observer they would have seemed to be none the worse
for their fling at running away. But on closer scrutiny they would again
have revealed the unmistakable signs of nervous tension. Their ears
moved jerkily on the slightest provocation. Still, the road was good and
clear, and I had no apprehensions.
Then came the sudden end of the trail. It was right in front of a farm
yard. Clearly, the farmer had broken the last part of the road over
which I had come. The trail widened out to a large, circus-shaped flat
in the drifts. The snow had the ruffled appearance of being thoroughly
tramped down by a herd of cattle. On both sides there were trees--wild
trees--a-plenty. Brush lined the narrow road gap ahead; but the snow had
piled in level with its tops. This had always been rather a bad spot,
though the last time I had seen it the snow had settled down to about
half the height of the shrubs. I stopped and hesitated for a moment. I
knew just where the trail had been. It was about twenty-five feet from
the fence of the field to the east. It was now covered under three to
four feet of freshly drifted-in snow. The drift seemed to be higher
towards the west, where the brush stood higher, too. So I decided to
stay as nearly as I could above the old trail. There, even though we
might break through the new snow the older drifts underneath were likely
to be firm enough.
We went ahead. The drift held, and slowly we climbed to its summit. It
is a strange coincidence that just then I should have glanced up at the
sky. I saw a huge, black cloud-mass elbowing its way, as it were, in
front of those islands of light, the promise of peace. And so much was
I by this time imbued with the moods of the skies that the disappearance
of this mild glimmer sent a regret through my very body. And
simultaneously with this thrill of regret there came--I remember this
as distinctly as if it had been an hour ago--the certainty of impending
disaster. The very next moment chaos reigned. The horses broke in, not
badly at all; but as a consequence of their nervous condition they flew
into a panic. I held them tight as they started to plunge. But there
was no guiding them; they were bound to have things their own way
altogether. It seemed as if they had lost their road-sense, too, for
instead of plunging at least straight ahead, out on the level trail,
they made, with irresistible bounds and without paying the slightest
attention to the pull of the lines, towards the east. There the drift,
not being packed by any previous traffic, went entirely to pieces under
their feet. I had meanwhile thrown off my robes, determined at all costs
to bring them to a stop, for I knew, if I allowed them to get away with
me this time, they would be spoiled for any further drives of mine.
Now just the very fraction of a second when I got my feet up against the
dashboard so as to throw my whole weight into my pull, they reared up
as if for one tremendous and supreme bound, and simultaneously I saw a
fence post straight under the cutter pole. Before I quite realized it,
the horses had already cleared the fence. I expected the collision, the
breaking of the drawbar and the bolting of the horses; but just then
my desperate effort in holding them told, and dancing and fretting
they stood. Then, in a flash, I mentally saw and understood the whole
situation. The runners of the cutter, still held up by the snow of the
drift which sloped down into the field and which the horses had churned
into slabs and clods, had struck the fence wire and, lifting the whole
of the conveyance, had placed me; cutter and all, balanced for a moment
to a nicety, on top of the post. But already we began to settle back.
I felt that I could not delay, for a moment later the runners would slip
off the wire and the cutter fall backward; that was the certain signal
for the horses to bolt. The very paradoxicality of the situation seemed
to give me a clue. I clicked my tongue and, holding the horses back with
my last ounce of strength, made them slowly dance forward and pull me
over the fence. In a moment I realized that I had made a mistake. A
quick pull would have jerked me clear of the post. As it was, it slowly
grated along the bottom of the box; then the cutter tilted forward, and
when the runners slipped off the wire, the cutter with myself pitched
back with a frightful knock against the post. The back panel of the box
still shows the splintered tear that fence post made. The shock of it
threw me forward, for a second I lost all purchase on the lines, and
again the horses went off in a panic. It was quite dark now, for the
clouds were thickening in the sky. While I attended to the horses, I
reflected that probably something had broken back there in the cutter,
but worst of all, I realized that this incident, for the time being
at least, had completely broken my nerve. As soon as I had brought the
horses to a stop, I turned in the knee-deep snow of the field and made
for the fence.
Half a mile ahead there gleamed a light. I had, of course, to stay on
the field, and I drove along, slowly and carefully, skirting the fence
and watching it as closely as what light there was permitted.
I do not know why this incident affected me the way it did; but I
presume that the cumulative effect of three mishaps, one following the
other, had something to do with it; the same as it affected the horses.
But more than that, I believe, it was the effect of the skies. I am
rather subject to the influence of atmospheric conditions. There are not
many things that I would rather watch. No matter what the aspect of the
skies may be, they fascinate me. I have heard people say, “What a dull
day!”--or, “What a sleepy day!”--and that when I was enjoying my own
little paradise in yielding to the moods of cloud and sky. To this very
hour I am convinced that the skies broke my nerve that night, that those
incidents merely furnished them with an opportunity to get their work in
more tellingly.
Of the remainder of the drive little needs to be said. I found a way out
of the field, back to the road, drove into the yard of the farm where I
had seen the light, knocked at the house, and asked for and obtained the
night’s accommodation for myself and for my horses.
At six o’clock next morning I was on the road again. Both I and the
horses had shaken off the nightmare, and through a sprinkling, dusting
fall of snow we made the correction line and finally home in the best of
moods and conditions.