of the field; at least the shape of
the big, white mound suggested a strawstack; and the trail led closely
by it. Sharp shadows showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began
to dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along its southern edge.

But we made it. By the time we reached the park that forms the approach
to the town from the south, the skies had changed completely. There
was now, as far as my eye would reach, just one vast, dark-blue,
star-spangled expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the
earth with a veritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar
stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do
not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year--as, for
instance, Vega's smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or
the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.

I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a narrow
bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both sides, makes the stars
seem brighter than they appear from the open fields. I have heard that
you can see a star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit if
it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make my impression less
improbable, perhaps. I know that not often have the stars seemed so much
alive to me as they did that night in the park.

And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five minutes, fed
the horses, had supper myself, and hitched up again.

On leaving town I went for another mile east in the shelter of a fringe
of bush; and this bush kept rustling as if a breeze had sprung up. But
it was not till I turned north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I
became conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was indeed a
slight breeze, coming from the north, and it felt very moist. Somehow it
felt homely and human, this breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a
time, not too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the trees
and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in delicate buds. So far,
however, its more immediate promise probably was snow.

But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up. Between the two
there was a distinct lull. And again there arose in the north, far away,
at the very end of my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder
wind that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts, with short
lulls in between; it still had that water-laden feeling, but it was now
what you