The road, which lay for the first few miles through cultivated land, entered eventually upon a stretch of sparsely wooded country, desolate and inhospitable enough. Stunted spruce trees, powdered with blue berries, clung tenaciously to the barren ground, and everywhere the grey monotonous boulders cropped out, scattered as though in the idle finish to some giant's play. Their uncouth rounded outlines suggested from a distance a field dotted with grey misshapen sheep, for ever movelessly browsing. The road was bad; a horse would have had difficulty in picking his way, and I cursed the well-meaning farmer roundly as I dismounted to push my heavy machine. A little distance on, however, things became better. I reached the beginning of a wood, gaunt ragged hickories interspersed with tangles of wild grape-vine, and matted creepers, and a few hundred yards beyond a broken snake-fence suggested the whereabouts of a house. I came upon it at the turn of the road, a square, red-painted frame house and barn, surrounded by a medley of small sheds and outhouses in every degree of dilapidation. There was no gate, merely a couple of bars let down in the fencing, and I left the bicycle a moment and went inside. The yard upon which I entered was a litter of old junk of every description, ancient packing-cases, broken barrels, scrap-iron, and bones flung into piles. The wagon-ruts leading up to the house were sunken deep in filth, and an indescribable odour filled the air, in which the smell of badly kept fowls predominated. They ran everywhere, a ragged nondescript crew, scratching, cackling, gazing at me from evil yellow-rimmed eyes. Many more were confined in the coops, mere oblong boxes of lath from which protruded gaunt heads and outstretched necks, whose mournful protest mingled with the clamour of their untrammelled brethren. So far as I could see, every shed held its prisoners, all in the same state of filth and neglect, a sore to the eyes and offence to the nostrils. There was that in the look and smell of the place that stuck in my throat, used as I was to poverty in both town and country. There seemed no one about, and after a moment's hesitation I retraced my steps across the black mire of the yard and regained the roadway. On the opposite side of the way a little ragged girl of about thirteen watched my retreat with keen eyes. She had been in the woods gathering the small uneatable nuts that children call pig-hickories; her apron was filled with the green unripe hulls. She grinned, backing a little at my approach. "Hello, sis," I said. "Who lives in that house there?" "'S Mister Menning's." "Ah!" I took another backward glance at the ill-kept yard, with its indescribable litter. As I did so a low moan, almost human in its misery, came from the barn behind the jumbled sheds. It was repeated, long-drawn and mournful, the protest of a dumb thing exhausted by suffering. I turned to the child sharply.