young
cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a
protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient
shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and
camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered
him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered him at the rear of the
stack, where he could nibble the hay, but not us! Then spreading the
horse-blanket on some loose hay for a bed, with the well-tufted seat of
the buggy for a pillow, and utilizing the lap robe for a cover against
dew, we fell heavily asleep, though I had all the time a half-conscious
feeling as if little creatures were scrambling about in the hay beneath
the blanket and occasionally brushing my face or ears with a batlike
wing, tiny paws, or whisking tail. When I awoke, and of course
immediately stirred up Evan, the moon was low on the opposite side of
the stack, the stars were hidden, and there was a dull red glow among
the heavy clouds of the eastern horizon like the reflection of a distant
fire, while an owl hooted close by from a tree and then flew with a
lurch across the meadow, evidently to the destruction of some small
creature, for a squeal accompanied the swoop. A mysterious thing, this
flight of the owl: the wings did not flap, there was no sound, merely
the consciousness of displaced air.

We were not, as it afterward proved, ten miles from home, and yet, as
far as trace of humanity was concerned, we might have been the only
created man and woman.

Do you remember the old gypsy song?--Ben Jonson's, I think--

"The owl is abroad, the bat, the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole both sit in a hole,
And frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they bay and the timbrels play
And the spindle now is turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled
But all the sky is a-burning."

But we were still more remote, for of beaters of timbrels and turners of
spindles were there none!

* * * * *

Your last chronicle interested us all. In the first place father
remembers Mrs. Marchant perfectly, for he and the doctor used to
exchange visits constantly during that long-ago summer when they lived
on the old Herb Farm at Coningsby. Father had heard that she was
hopelessly deranged, but nothing further, and the fact that she is
living within driving distance in the midst of her garden