around their fireside, chatting or reading.
Lamps shed their homely light; roof and wall kept the fog-spook securely
out: nothing as comfortable then as to listen to stories of being lost
on the marsh, or to tell them... But between those people and myself
the curtain had fallen--no sign of their presence, no faintest gleam
of their light and warmth! They did not know of the stranger passing
outside, his whole being a-yearn with the desire for wife and child.
I listened intently--no sound of man or beast, no soughing of wind in
stems or rustling of the very last leaves that were now fast falling...
And then the startling neighing of Dan, my horse! This was the third
trip he made with me, and I might have known and expected it, but it
always came as a surprise. Whenever we passed that second farm, he
stopped and raising his head, with a sideways motion, neighed a loud and
piercing call. And now he had stopped and done it again. He knew where
we were. I lowered my whip and patted his rump. How did he know? And why
did he do it? Was there a horse on this farmstead which he had known in
former life? Or was it a man? Or did he merely feel that it was about
time to put in for the night? I enquired later on, but failed to
discover any reason for his behaviour.

Now came that angling road past the "White Range Line House." I relied
on the horses entirely. This "Range Line House" was inhabited now--a
settler was putting in winter-residence so he might not lose his claim.
He had taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and always had
I so far seen a light in the house.

It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog was less dense
than it had been farther south, and the horses, once started, were
swinging along though in a leisurely way, yet without hesitation.
Another half hour passed. Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from
the powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the horses,
struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the right of the road. I
knew that stone. Yes, surely the fog must be thinning, or I could not
have seen it. I could now also dimly make out the horses' heads, as they
nodded up and down...

And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out a blacker black
in the black--the majestic poplars north of the "Range Line House." Not
that I could really see them or pick out the slightest detail--no! But
it seemed to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the s