already began to wear an unfamiliar houseless and homeless look, an air
of foreign travel, and though the shack was but a few yards behind us, it
seemed already miles away, wrapped in lonely distance, wistfully
forsaken. Everything we looked at seemed to have gained a new importance
and significance; every tree and bush seemed to say, "So many miles to
New York," and we unconsciously looked at and remarked on the most
trifling objects with the eye of explorers, and took as minute an
interest in the usual bird and wayside weed as though we were engaged in
some "flora and fauna" survey of untrodden regions.

"That's a bluebird," said Colin, as a faint pee-weeing came with a thin
melancholy note from a telegraph wire. And we both listened attentively,
with a learned air, as though making a mental note for some
ornithological society in New York. "Bluebird seen in Erie County,
October 1, 1908!" So might Sir John Mandeville have noted the occurrence
of birds of paradise in the domains of Prester John.

"That's a silo," said Colin, pointing to a cylindrical tower at the end
of a group of barns, from which came the sound of an engine surrounded by
a group of men, occupied in feeding it with trusses of corn from a
high-piled wagon. "They are laying in fodder for the Winter." Interesting
agricultural observation!

In the surrounding fields the pumpkins, globes of golden orange, lay
scattered among the wintry-looking corn-stalks.

"Bully subject for a picture!" said Colin.

Before we had gone very far, we did stop at a cottage standing at a
puzzling corner of cross-roads, and asked the way, not to Versailles,