HE most recent experience of my 
own with the mysterious fox-fire oc- 
curred a short time ago in a home- 
ward drive with a companion from 
a botanizing expedition about twelve miles dis- 
tant. It was near ten o'clock. The sky was 
overcast, only a stray star of the first magnitude 
now and then peeping out from between the rifts 
of hazy floating clouds. The new moon, " wi' th' 
auld moon i' her arm," had sunk below the 
western hills, and so dark had it become that 
the road ahead, at best but a faint suggestion, 
was occasionally lost for minutes together in the 
deepened gloom of the overhanging trees, only 
the keener nocturnal vision of the trusted horse 
affording the slightest hope of keeping in the 
wheel-tracks. 
In one of these dark passages we were suddenly 
surprised by a gleam of light a few rods ahead to 
