There was a new terror now that seemed to go down to the very bottom of me, to the bottom of the inside of me, I mean. It shook me like I have seen a rat in a barn shaken by a dog. It was a terror like a big wave that hits you when you are walking on a seashore, maybe. You see it coming and you try to run and get away but when you start to run inshore there is a stone cliff you can’t climb. So the wave comes high as a mountain, and there it is, right in front of you and nothing in all this world can stop it. And now it had knocked you down and rolled and tumbled you over and over and washed you clean, clean, but dead maybe. And that’s the way I felt—I seemed to myself dead with blind terror, it was a feeling like the finger of God running down your back and burning you clean, I mean. It burned all that silly nonsense about being a girl right out of me. I screamed at last and the spell that was on me was broken. I’ll bet the scream I let out of me could have been heard a mile and a half. Right away I felt better and crawled out from among the pile of bones, and then I stood on my own feet again and I wasn’t a woman, or a young girl any more but a man and my own self, and as far as I know I’ve been that way ever since. Even the black night seemed warm and alive now, like a mother might be to a kid in the dark. Only I couldn’t go back to the race track because I was blubbering and crying and was ashamed of myself and of what a fool I had made of myself. Someone might see me and I couldn’t stand that, not at that moment. So I went across the field, walking now, not running like a crazy man, and pretty soon I came to a fence and crawled over and got into another field, in which there was a straw stack, I just happened to find in the pitch darkness. The straw stack had been there a long time and some sheep had nibbled away at it until they had made a pretty deep hole, like a cave, in the side of it. I found the hole and crawled in and there were some sheep in there, about a dozen of them. When I came in, creeping on my hands and knees, they didn’t make much fuss, just stirred around a little and then settled down. So I settled down amongst them too. They were warm and gentle and kind, like Pick-it-boy, and being in there with them made me feel better than I would have felt being with any human person I knew at that time. So I settled down and slept after a while, and when I woke up it was daylight and not very cold and the rain was over. The clouds were breaking away from the sky now and maybe there would be a fair the next week but if there was I knew I wouldn’t be there to see it. Because what I expected to happen did happen. I had to go back across the fields and the fairground to the place where my clothes were, right in the broad daylight, and me stark naked, and of course I knew someone would be up and would raise a shout, and every swipe and every driver would stick his head out and would whoop with laughter.