The Song and the Singer 127 



place now. These simple people were afraid of 

 something, but it was kept from us and we did 

 not have the slightest notion of what all the talk 

 was about. Jerry Norton had called to us from 

 way out in the lake, where he was fishing, that 

 we had best sharpen up our tomahawks as there 

 was going to be an Indian war. Nobody believed 

 him, as a rule, but I think we concluded that he 

 was telling the truth and began to think Indians. 

 Now I was in no way prepared for what I saw, 

 when coming out of a thick growth of poplars 

 on the edge of a little marsh, I saw a great fiery 

 body with a long tail of flame in the midnight 

 sky, rushing straight toward me. Clesen Smith 

 was no fool and he had said "it" would come in 

 three days and that was three days ago. All 

 the world was more or less afraid of that big 

 comet of sixty years ago ; is it any wonder that a 

 lost child in the woods lonely and afraid 

 should have been simply terror-stricken? A mad 

 panic seized him and he ran like a frightened 

 hare through under-brush and vines and bram- 

 bles that scratched his face and tore his scanty 

 clothes, insensible to every feeling except the de- 

 sire to put all the space possible between himself 

 and the awful thing that was going to hit the earth 

 right near the poplar swamp where he first saw 

 it. He kept it up till, panting and sobbing, he 

 fell to the earth unable to proceed a single step 



