FOX-FIRE 13 



preached it, and as I stood face to face within a 

 few inches of it no vestige of material surface ap- 

 peared to sustain it; it seemed hanging motion- 

 less in mid-air. I reached out my hand, which 

 momentarily intervened like a black silhouette 



against the 

 glow, with 



which it soon came in 

 contact. Upon further 

 investigation, this proved 



to be the contact of a mere prosaic fence -post, 

 which, for some mysterious reason, had been sin- 

 gled out for glorification among the ten thousand 

 others of its neighbors and transformed into a pil- 

 lar of fire. The post was about six inches in diam- 

 eter, its summit an unbroken mass of light, which 

 extended in more or less broken patches below for 

 a distance of six feet, thus suggesting the effect of 

 the rippling elongated reflection of a lantern in 

 water noticed by my companion, and which would 



