THE SCARCITY OF SKUNKS 103 



the cool, the calm, the quiet of this serene and 

 beautiful midnight. Even the call of a whippoor- 

 will in the adjoining pasture worried me. I desired 

 to meditate, yet clear, consecutive thinking seemed 

 strangely difficult. I felt like one disturbed. I was 

 out of harmony with this peaceful environment. 

 Perhaps I had hurried too hard, or I was too 

 thinly clothed, or perhaps my feet were cold and 

 wet. I only know, as I stooped to untwist a long 

 and briery runner from about my ankle, that there 

 was great confusion in my mind, and in my spirit 

 there was chaos. I felt myself going to pieces, 

 I, the nature-lover! Had I not advocated the 

 raising of a few extra hens just for the sake of 

 keeping the screaming hawk in air and the wild 

 fox astir in our scanty picnic groves ? And had I 

 not said as much for the skunk ? Why, then, at 

 one in the morning should I, nor clothed, nor in 

 my right mind, be picking my barefoot way 

 among the tangled dewberry vines behind the 

 barn, swearing by the tranquil stars to blow the 

 white-striped carcass of that skunk into ten mil- 

 lion atoms if I had to sit up all the next night to 

 do it? 



One o'clock in the morning was the fiend's 



