“’Ere’s a go!” one might have exclaimed, without hurting the feelings of a preacher. It was snowing! And even a preacher would have remarked further, probably with adjectives, on seeing that Government house in which we were to spend the night. It was a log hut in truth, built corral-fashion, the poles set on end, the chinks originally plastered with adobe. There was but one room, containing a single bunk made of boards, an old cookstove, and a collection of broken tools and empty canned-goods cases. The floor was of packed earth. Without exaggeration, I may say that the roof and the floor were intact; but practically all the caulking had escaped from the log walls, and the wind felt its way inside with long icy fingers. The mechanic dropped into the bunk and was asleep almost instantly; and, after building a rushing fire in the stove, I rolled myself in Government blankets, and rolled again, this time under the stove, to pass the night. But I did not rest in the poetry of the wild. The refulgent moon did not come up to spill its splendor through the open door, nor even through the extensive openings of the wall; the perfume of the growing pines did not soothe with healing balsam, the cry of the loon did not sound from across the lake, and so forth. The floor, however, was under that stove; and the floor had not been constructed along those scientific lines followed in the building of Ostermoor mattresses. Plastic as is my figure, it refused to conform. And to add to my distress, someone in all that vast and lonely country owned an old gray horse. I know he was old, and I know he was gray, for he acted just like a silly old gray horse. And he was hobbled, and he was out in the snow, and he had a bell tied to his neck. Clankety-clank-clank, clang, claaangngng—clankety, clang, clank! Around and around and around the house he voyaged all that night, proceeding by hops and plunges as a hobbled horse must, his gait just enough hampered by the lashings of his two front feet to impart a syncopated tempo to the discords and jangles of that flat metallic bell. At times he would pause, as if for breath, and there would be quiet—deep silence—just sufficient for a doze; then—clankety, clang, clang, clank! he would break out again. I have listened to jazz orchestras of various colors and degrees of crime, and other peace-destroying nuisances meriting death; but I have never heard anything equal to the nocturnal pilgrimage of that old gray horse. I would drop off to sleep, and suddenly wake as if feeling his hobbled feet squarely in the centre of my contracted chest; but he would be ten yards off, miserably clanking his way to another sector of the snow-covered terrain. And confused, I would lift my head to listen, knocking it of course against the bottom of the stove, when a long icicle would stab through a wall chink and take me fairly in the ear. Perhaps it was a pleasant night for Smith, who faithfully and harmoniously snored away the hours.