GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER 195 



does it help to lay the hand on them and know 

 they are stumps. It is damp and draughty as it 

 was in the cavern where the prince first found the 

 east wind, and I look about half expecting to see 

 the strong old woman who tended the fire and put 

 the w r inds in bags when they did not behave. 

 There she stands in the dusk nearby and only 

 by putting my hand on the prickly needles and 

 the rough trunk do I recognize a familiar pitch 

 pine. The trees near this entrance to the en- 

 chanted wood sigh as the east wind touches them, 

 seeming to draw deep breaths as living creatures 

 might and thus add verisimilitude to the terror 

 that stands on either hand to reach for me. 

 Thus ancient hermits depicted the soul on the 

 walls of their caverns, a shrinking shape that fled 

 among goblins that clutched at it from all sides. 

 The primal instinct of fear of things half seen 

 still lurks in each man's bones. On a pitch dark 

 night I had made the entrance to the wood with- 

 out thought of ghosts. It is the half known that 

 frightens us. 



Once within the wood in the deepening dusk 

 I seemed to leave the bogies behind. Not fai 

 through the pines the path brought me to a half 

 cleared hollow where three-year sprouts mingle 



