l vision I saw beeches and elms
and walnut trees around a squire's place in the old country.

The road began to be lined with thickets of shrubs here: choke cherry
bushes, with some ripe, dried-up black berries left on the branches,
with iron-black bark, and with wiry stems, in the background; in
front of them, closer to the driveway, hawthorn, rich with red fruit;
rosebushes with scarlet leaves reaching down to nearly underfoot. It
is one of the most pleasing characteristics of our native thickets
that they never rise abruptly Always they shade off through cushionlike
copses of smaller growth into the level ground around.

The sun was sinking. I knew a mile or less further north I should have
to turn west in order to avoid rough roads straight ahead. That meant
doubling up, because some fifteen miles or so north I should have to
turn east again, my goal being east of my starting place. These fifteen
or sixteen miles of the northward road I did not know; so I was anxious
to make them while I could see. I looked at the moon--I could count on
some light from her for an hour or so after sundown. But although I knew
the last ten or twelve miles of my drive fairly well, I was also aware
of the fact that there were in it tricky spots--forkings of mere trails
in muskeg bush--where leaving the beaten log-track might mean as much
as being lost. So I looked at my watch again and shook the lines over
Peter's back. The first six miles had taken me nearly fifty minutes.
I looked at the sun again, rather anxiously I could count on him for
another hour and a quarter--well and good then!

There was the turn. Just north of it, far back from both roads, another
farmyard. Behind it--to the north, stretched out, a long windbreak of
poplars, with a gap or a vista in its centre. Barn and outbuildings
were unpainted, the house white; a not unpleasing group, but something
slovenly about it. I saw with my mind's eye numerous children, rather
neglected, uncared for, an overworked, sickly woman, a man who was bossy
and harsh.

The road angles here. Bell's farm consists of three quartersections; the
southwest quarter lends its diagonal for the trail. I had hardly
made the turn, however, when a car came to meet me. It stopped. The
school-inspector of the district looked out. I drew in and returned his
greeting, half annoyed at being thus delayed. But his very next word
made me sit up. He had that morning inspected my wife's school and seen
her