Now came that angling road past the "White Range Line
House." I relied on the horses entirely. This "Range Line
House" was inhabited now--a settler was putting in
winter-residence so he might not lose his claim. He had
taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and
always had I so far seen a light in the house.
It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog
was less dense than it had been farther south, and the
horses, once started, were swinging along though in a
leisurely way, yet without hesitation. Another half hour
passed. Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from the
powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the
horses, struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the
right of the road. I knew that stone. Yes, surely the
fog must be thinning, or I could not have seen it. I
could now also dimly make out the horses' heads, as they
nodded up and down...
And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out
a blacker black in the black--the majestic poplars north
of the "Range Line House." Not that I could really see
them or pick out the slightest detail--no! But it seemed
to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the
slow flow of the fog--as the water in a slow flowing
stream will come to rest when it strikes the stems of a
willow submerged at its margin.
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