ething brushed close by her face, and
she looked just in time to see a winged creature rise above the cabin
and sail away.

"That was a night bird," she muttered. As she stopped to set the butter
in the water, came another thought. "Perhaps it was a moth!" Mrs.
Comstock dropped the butter and hurried out with the lamp; she held it
high above her head and waited until her arms ached. Small insects of
night gathered, and at last a little dusty miller, but nothing came of
any size.

"I must go where they are, if I get them," muttered Mrs. Comstock.

She went to the barn after the stout pair of high boots she used in
feeding stock in deep snow. Throwing these beside the back door she
climbed to the loft over the spring house, and hunted an old lard oil
lantern and one of first manufacture for oil. Both these she cleaned and
filled. She listened until everything up stairs had been still for over
half an hour. By that time it was past eleven o'clock. Then she took the
lantern from the kitchen, the two old ones, a handful of matches, a ball
of twine, and went from the cabin, softly closing the door.

Sitting on the back steps, she put on the boots, and then stood gazing
into the perfumed June night, first in the direction of the woods on her
land, then toward the Limberlost. Its outline was so dark and forbidding
she shuddered and went down the garden, following the path toward the
woods, but as she neared the pool her knees wavered and her courage
fled. The knowledge that in her soul she was now glad Robert Comstock
was at the bottom of it made a coward of her, who fearlessly had mourned
him there, nights untold. She could not go on. She skirted the back of
the garden, crossed a field, and came out on the road. Soon she reached
the Limberlost. She hunted until she found the old trail, then followed
it stumbling over logs and through clinging vines and grasses. The heavy
boots clumped on her feet, overhanging branches whipped her face and
pulled her hair. But her eyes were on the sky as she went straining into
the night, hoping to find signs of a living creature on wing.

By and by she began to see the wavering flight of something she thought
near the right size. She had no idea where she was, but she stopped,
lighted a lantern and hung it as high as she could reach. A little
distance away she placed the second and then the third. The objects
came nearer and sick with disappointment she saw that they were bats.
Crouching