Until the thawing of the snow I faithfully worked upon the section, but
when Spring again set in with full force, there came another attack of
the strange fever that drove me onward every year, and, following the
"Call of the Wanderlust", I left for the South, having again promised
that with the approach of winter I would be on hand to fill my place
with the section crew.

I drifted along with the harvest, but after the wintry storms that swept
over the endless expanse of the plains had twisted off the last leaves
which the autumn had burnished to a fiery red, and the nights became too
chilly to make out-of-door camping a pleasure, I found my way back to my
North Dakota section reservation, which I now considered my regular
winter quarters.

I arrived at the section house almost at the time when the hand car was
due to return for supper, and intending to surprise Mrs. McDonald,
knowing that in all the world it would be the poor widow who would give
me, a homeless harvester, a glad welcome, I slipped almost noiselessly
up to the porch and knocked on the door, but no answer came to my
repeated knocks. Then I tried to open the door, which during Foreman
McDonald's time had never been known to be locked, and to my surprise I
found it bolted. Thinking that perhaps the widow had gone to purchase
provisions, I walked around to the rear of the building and tried every
door, but found that all of them were locked. A miserably starved black
cat, that made a ten foot leap when she first espied me, was the only
sign of life on the place, while the many rag-stuffed broken window
panes plainly indicated that great changes had been made at the "big"
house since my last departure. There was something uncanny in the
silence about the place, and a strange gloom seemed to have settled over
everything that foreboded to me only evil happenings.