ed window on the northside light. Unreasonably I
shuddered.

This house, too, became a much-looked-for landmark to me on my future
drives. I learned that it stood on the range line and called it the
"White Range Line House." There hangs a story by this house. Maybe I
shall one day tell it...

Beyond the great and awe-inspiring poplar-bluff the trail took a sharp
turn eastward. From the southwest another rut-road joined it at the
bend. I could only just make it out in the dark, for even moonlight was
fading fast now. The sudden, reverberating tramp of the horse's feet
betrayed that I was crossing a culvert. I had been absorbed in getting
my bearings, and so it came as a surprise. It had not been mentioned in
the elaborate directions which I had received with regard to the road to
follow. For a moment, therefore, I thought I must be on the wrong trail.
But just then the dim view, which had been obstructed by copses and
thickets, cleared ahead in the last glimmer of the moon, and I made
out the back cliff of forest darkly looming in the north--that forest I
knew. Behind a narrow ribbon of bush the ground sloped down to the bed
of the creek--a creek that filled in spring and became a torrent, but
now was sluggish and slow where it ran at all. In places it consisted of
nothing but a line of muddy pools strung along the bottom
of its bed. In summer these were a favourite haunting place for
mosquito-and-fly-plagued cows. There the great beasts would lie down in
the mud and placidly cool their punctured skins. A few miles southwest
the creek petered out entirely in a bed of shaly gravel bordering on the
Big Marsh which I had skirted in my drive and a corner of which I was
crossing just now.

The road was better here and spoke of more traffic. It was used to haul
cordwood in late winter and early spring to a town some ten or fifteen
miles to the southwest. So I felt sure again I was not lost but would
presently emerge on familiar territory. The horse seemed to know it,
too, for he raised his head and went at a better gait.

A few minutes passed. There was hardly a sound from my vehicle. The
buggy was rubber-tired, and the horse selected a smooth ribbon of grass
to run on. But from the black forest wall there came the soughing of the
wind and the nocturnal rustle of things unknown. And suddenly there came
from close at hand a startling sound: a clarion call that tore the
veil lying over my mental vision: the sharp, repeated w