the yard at
the side trying to get in at one of the windows. I swung my door open
a little more, it creaked and I saw something dark go across the yard
and over the fence. There was no sound that I could hear. I could not
see that it touched the ground. It went behind a haystack by the
fence. There was instantly another glimpse of it as it passed beyond
the stack, going either behind or through the shed under which the men
stood that night when Pike shot Allenham. I was not sure if I saw it
the other side of there or not, but I could not see so well beyond the
shed. The motion was gliding; I heard no footstep, nor sound of wings,
nor anything. It snowed some more in the night. This morning I could
find nothing wrong except that a clothes-line beyond the shed was
broken. It had hung across the way which what I saw must have gone.
Its ends were tied to posts at least seven feet from the ground, and
if I remember aright, it has all the time been drawn up so that it did
not sag at all. It was snapped off as if something had run against
it.

I must close now and do up my work for the night. I only ask that I
may live to see you all again. If I do not, then may this reach you
somehow.

Your Dutiful Son,
JUDSON PITCHER.

CHAPTER XIII

Some Talk at Breakfast, and various other Family Affairs: with Notes
on the Weather, and a sight of Something to the Northwest.

It was on the morning of Tuesday, January 25th, as I sat at breakfast
with Pawsy in her chair at one end and with Kaiser at the other,
drumming on the floor for another bit of bacon, that I said to
myself:

"It is just one month to-day since I clapped eyes on a human being;
and the ones I saw then were not very good humans, being thieving and
drunken Indians." And when I said this I had not forgotten (when had
it been once out of my mind, waking or sleeping?) what I saw on
New-Year's night; but I knew not if I were to count that as human or
what.

I remember that Sunday night after I finished the letter to my mother
which I put in the last chapter, how I found it darker than I expected
when I went out, and how I ran along the snowbanks with my heart
thumping like to split, and threw the letter in the top of the
post-office door (the rightful opening was long before buried under
the snow) and then shot back to the hotel, not daring to look behind
me or even