There were stars, too, but they were not very
brilliant. Way down in the north, at the edge of the
world, there lay a long, low-flung line of cloud, black,
scarcely discernible in the light of the moon. And from
its centre, true north, there grew out a monstrous human
arm, reaching higher and higher, up to the zenith, blotting
the stars behind it. It looked at first--in texture and
rigid outline--as the stream of straw looks that flows
from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand
straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it
did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise,
growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at
its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This
cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by
condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it
obscured the moon.
Just then I reached the end of my run to the west. I was
nearing a block of dense poplar bush in which somewhere
two farmsteads lay embedded. The road turned to the north.
I was now exactly south of and in line with that long,
twenty-mile trail where I had startled horses, rabbit,
and partridge on the last described drive.
Pages:
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223