I believe I
was just twenty-five miles from the northern correction
line. At this corner where I turned I had to devote all
my attention to the negotiating of a few bad drifts.
When I looked up again, I was driving along the bottom
of a wide road gap formed by tall and stately poplars on
both sides--trees which stood uncannily still. The light
of the moon became less dim, and I raised my eyes. That
band of cloud--for it had turned into a band now, thus
losing its threatening aspect--had widened out and loosened
up. It was a strip of flocculent, sheepy-looking, little
cloudlets that suggested curliness and innocence. And
the moon stood in between like a goodnatured shepherd in
the stories of old.
For a while I kept my eyes on the sky. The going was good
indeed on this closed-in road. And so I watched that
insensible, silent, and yet swift shifting of things in
the heavens that seemed so orderly, pre-ordained, and as
if regulated by silent signals. The clouds lost their
sheeplike look again; they became more massive; they took
on more substance and spine, more manliness, as it were;
and they arranged themselves in distinct lines.
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