204 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



When the moon is riding high and small through a 

 driving cloud-wrack, the farmer on his way in from his 

 last trip to the barn pauses to contemplate it, and is 

 aware of the curious alternation of moonlight and 

 shadow over the landscape, almost like slow lightning 

 flashes indefinitely prolonged. The distant fields, the 

 timbered mountain side, come into dim view, and then 

 slowly they are obliterated again as a dark cloud sweeps 

 across the moon, and the world seems to shiver. Then 

 the farmer says to himself: 



Open and shet 

 Is a sign of wet, 



and looks, perhaps, to see if the spout is adjusted over 

 the rain barrel, or thinks of the hay he had to leave out 

 in the field. 



Whether "open and shet" is a sign of wet depends, of 

 course, on the quality of the clouds and the direction 

 of the wind, and to read these more intricate signs aright 

 was the province once of the weather prophets. That 

 they could tell so unerringly, as many of them often 

 did, whether the clouds were "wind clouds" or were 

 shredded off from some storm that would not advance 

 farther; whether they threatened actual precipitation 

 or whether changes of temperature were due which 

 would alter the meteorological conditions, was truly a 

 remarkable proof of their powers of observation and 

 deduction. I once knew an old woman who lived 



