ng my bag to my shoulder,
and with much warmth of parting I set my face again to the free road and
the open country.

CHAPTER IX. THE MAN POSSESSED

I suppose I was predestined (and likewise foreordained) to reach the
city sooner or later. My fate in that respect was settled for me when
I placed my trust in the vagrant road. I thought for a time that I was
more than a match for the Road, but I soon learned that the Road
was more than a match for me. Sly? There's no name for it. Alluring,
lovable, mysterious--as the heart of a woman. Many a time I followed
the Road where it led through innocent meadows or climbed leisurely hill
slopes only to find that it had crept around slyly and led me before I
knew it into the back door of some busy town.

Mostly in this country the towns squat low in the valleys, they lie in
wait by the rivers, and often I scarcely know of their presence until
I am so close upon them that I can smell the breath of their heated
nostrils and hear their low growlings and grumblings.

My fear of these lesser towns has never been profound. I have even been
bold enough, when I came across one of them, to hasten straight through
as though assured that Cerberus was securely chained; but I found,
after a time, what I might indeed have guessed, that the Road, also led
irresistibly to the lair of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of the
species, where he lies upon the plain, lolling under his soiled gray
blanket of smoke.

It is wonderful to be safe at home again, to watch the tender, reddish
brown shoots of the Virginia creeper reaching in at my study window, to
see the green of my own quiet fields, to hear the peaceful clucking of
the hens in the sunny dooryard--and Harriet humming at her work in the
kitchen.

When I left the Ransomes that fine spring morning, I had not the
slightest presentiment of what the world held in store for me. After
being a prisoner of the weather for so long, I took to the Road with
fresh joy. All the fields were of a misty greenness and there were pools
still shining in the road, but the air was deliciously clear, clean,
and soft. I came through the hill country for three or four miles, even
running down some of the steeper places for the very joy the motion gave
me, the feel of the air on my face.

Thus I came finally to the Great Road, and stood for a moment looking
first this way, then that.

"Where now?" I asked aloud.

With an amusing sense of the possibil