hoes
on again, as carefully and scientifically as only a man who has had
pneumonia and is a chronic sufferer from pleuritis knows how to do.

At last I proceeded. After listening again with great care for any sound
I touched the horses with my whip, and they fell into a quiet trot. It
was nearly seven now, and I had probably not yet made eight miles. We
swung along. If I was right in my calculations and the horses kept
to the road, I should strike the "twelve-mile bridge" in about
three-quarters of an hour. That was the bridge leading through the
cottonwood gate to the grade past the "hovel." I kept the watch in the
mitt of my left hand.

Not for a moment did it occur to me to turn back. Way up north there was
a young woman preparing supper for me. The fog might not be there--she
would expect me--I could not disappoint her. And then there was the
little girl, who usually would wake up and in her "nightie" come out of
bed and sleepily smile at me and climb on to my knee and nod off again.
I thought of them, to be sure, of the hours and hours in wait for them,
and a great tenderness came over me, and gratitude for the belated home
they gave an aging man...

And slowly my mind reverted to the things at hand. And this is what was
the most striking feature about them: I was shut in, closed off from
the world around. Apart from that cone of visibility in front of the
headlight, and another much smaller one from the bicycle lamp, there was
not a thing I could see. If the road was the right one, I was passing
now through some square miles of wild land. Right and left there were
poplar thickets, and ahead there was that line of stately cottonwoods.
But no suggestion of a landmark--nothing except a cone of light which
was filled with fog and cut into on both sides by two steaming and
rhythmically moving horseflanks. It was like a very small room, this
space of light--the buggy itself, in darkness, forming an alcove to it,
in which my hand knew every well-appointed detail. Gradually, while
I was warming up, a sense of infinite comfort came, and with it the
enjoyment of the elvish aspect.

I began to watch the fog. By bending over towards the dashboard and
looking into the soon arrested glare I could make out the component
parts of the fog. It was like the mixture of two immiscible
liquids--oil, for instance, shaken up with water. A fine, impalpable,
yet very dense mist formed the ground mass. But in it there floated
myriads o