xperience of the last few minutes seem fanciful, unreal. He
was no longer under the spell of that ghostly column and he was not so
sure that he believed in it. To bestir himself upon the authority of
such an uncanny warning seemed rather foolish. He almost found it
easier, now, to believe that he had seen some spectral thing in the
graveyard.

As he emerged from the house the familiar things about him seemed to
mock his vision of a warning message in the sky. The startled chickens
in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their
perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at
the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as
if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise.
The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill
Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he hardly knew what
to think....

With his jack-knife he cut a piece from the rope which held the calf and
moved the peg nearer to the animal which looked curiously on at this
unexpected abridgment of its sphere of freedom. It almost seemed to
Peter that the calf was laughing at him.

This piece of rope he stretched across the road, fastening one end to
the rotten gate-post, long deserted by its gate, the other to a tree.
Then he hung the lantern midway of this line. This seemed as much as his
waning hope justified, but on second thought he stole into the house,
took a black tomato crate marker from the kitchen shelf and on a paper
flour-bag printed the words DANGER ROAD CLOSED. This he hung upon the
rope near the lantern. Then he sat down on the old carriage block where
they used to stand the milk cans and waited. He felt rather foolish
waiting there and he wondered what he should do if a big car with the
number 50792 and an eagle on it should really come along....

The night was pitch dark; somewhere in the lonely woods hard by the
screech owl was still calling, and the brisk autumn wind, freshening as
the night advanced into the wee hours, conjured up strange noises in the
loose hanging sticks of the old ramshackle fence along the roadside.
Dried leaves, driven by the fitful gusts of wind, sounded like someone,
or some _thing_, hurrying by.

Now, indeed, Peter's fine hopes melted away as he waited there in the
darkness. To be sure, this was a main road, as likely a route as any
thereabouts for autos, and in the daytime many passed there. Bu