WILD PASTURES 



The false dawn reddened and van- 

 ished, the gray of the real dawn was 

 streaked and then flushed with rosy 

 light shot through with gold, and a 

 thousand voices of jubilee rang from 

 treetop to treetop the whole pasture 

 through and far out into the wood be- 

 yond, and still I waited, stretched mo- 

 tionless. A man might have thought 

 me dead, the victim of some midnight 

 tragedy, but the denizens of the pasture 

 are wiser in their own province than 

 that. 



In the gray of that first dusk, that 

 was hardly streaked with the reassuring 

 red of dawn, a crow slipped silent and 

 bat-like from the top of a neighboring 

 pine. In that twilight of early dawn 

 you could not see him continually as he 

 flapped along. The motions of his 

 wings gave him strange appearances 

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