Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1905-05-05
W|CKLYS WOODS
BY n. W. TAYLOR
By n. w. TAYLOR

ed seb-um-up avn his coat-tails, Squar.
TN the next l h-yurn NV i'm, he taken
the train fur Chicago 'thout stoppun to
settle lot little bills roun about h'yur
at know NV myself"
There was a great deal more of the
same roaring fire of shrewd, half-humor-
Gus comments and observations upon Mr..
Mason. Lizzy, fully aware that she vio-
lated no rule of Sandtown etiquette,
went up stairs to bed in her own little
hot room, when she tired of the 'hair-
rangue," and was soon blissfully uncon-
scious of the weight that began to drag
at her hitherto buOyant and merry heart.
1t might have been the whistle of the
midnight train that awoke her. She did
not know. There was no striking of
clocks, and there was not sufficient light
! from the wide open south gable window
to enable her to see the hands OF her
watch, and so she could not make out
that it was the reverberatng roar Of the
train from the distant city that broke her
rest into unequal segments.
Her bed was drawn out in front of the
| open window so that the cool soft night
breeze coming out of the woods and
face in its refreshing eddies and ripples.
Whatever had awakened her. she lay
there looking out into the shady street
| little bit dimmed with summer nights
fog. She was sure then that she was
fully awake, and that she saw in the
| road, not sixty feet away, Mr.. Will Ma
son walking slowly toward the river, and
| having his face turned over his right
shoulder and his head thrown back just
far enough to allow him to fix his eyes
upon that window, that he knew was
the window Of her bedroom.
He passed on; and she was so anxious
to know more of this lonely walk Of his,
because his very presence seemed to as
communication with the hero of her
dreams-Huntley-t she arose and
glided to the side Of the window farthest
from the pedestrian.
She had to cross In front of the open
window, and she thought there was some
danger that he might see the glimmer of
her long, white nightdress against the
black background of the dark room.
Sinking down upon her knees and
doubling back till she sat upon her small,
bare feet, and forward till an elbow rest
ed upon the low sill of the window, she
looked out and saw him standing with his
face turned directly toward her. Her
heart leaped hard against the soft, plant
walls of her little chest, and she drew
back into the darkness.
In an instant she peeped out to be
Mortified at the spectacle of a gigantic
black figure, half enveloped in the thick
er fog toward the river, and seeming to
updulate threateningly, and to elongate
iD an upward direction, as some of the
make-believe giants of the circus and
the farce are seen to do
Then, while she lay there in a frozen
horror of fascinated, wide-eyed gazing,
the huge specter dimmed and vanished.
How she got back to bed, and what
brought her mother running to her room,
she only knew from her.
Mrs. Wickly lay down. taking her
frightened daughter in her arms, as she
was in the habit of doing yet at times,
and endeavored to reassure her by tell
ing her that it was simply the climax of
some hideous dream. Her father com
ing in, more deliberately sat by the win
dow and told her that this was simply a
phenomenon of the fog-an unusual one,
to be sure, in all its details, but clearly
eXplicable upon maxims of physical sci
| ence.
For instance the undulatory motion
and the elongation of the specter in a
vertical direction, were visual phenom-
ena. The mist concealing the feet of
| Al. 1ol oil
him, and thus left no object within the
range of vision for comparative measure
ments, such as the eye makes automat-
ically every instant
The uudulating movement upward was
the pulsating or wavelike advance of the
fog bank toward her, thus putting the
gradually disappearing body and head at
farther and farther distances as more
and more of the foreground was en-
croached upon by the advancing fog
bank. That might all be good physical
science, but she had seen something that
frightened her horribly. And she felt
that some dreadful misfortune was COM
ing upon her, she couldn't imagine what.
The bright sunlight of the next day
did more to explain away the specter
than all the physical science that all
Sandtown possessed.
All Sandtown, however. got hint of the
story in some unaccountable way, and
told it with much multifarious ingenious
and original additions, amendments and
substtutions, so that it got out that a
"hant' was walkun the "Overcoat
Road'-as the strictly ex-urban portion
of the continuation Of Main street had
been called from time so remote tina,
it was lost in legendary incertitude.
CHAPTER VIII.
Right In the middle of the red-hot
month of July the light, loam-mixed sand