We left tracks in three states that day, the Yellowstone Trail dipping unexpectedly into Indiana, seen too late and briefly to leave any impression but of an excellent cafeteria at South Bend. Some time after dark, our sense of direction took a nose dive, and was permanently injured. At half-past eight we reckoned the miles, and knew there was to be no rest for the weary if we were to reach Detroit next day. Hopelessly lost by now, confused by many arguments, backings and turnings, we knocked, somewhere in Indiana, at a Hoosier door, and an old man in his stocking feet came out, calling lovingly, “That you, dear?” We almost wished we were his dear, and might rest in the yellow glow of his parlor instead of pushing on in the dark. We were several miles off our bearings in both directions it seemed. He told us off nine turns to the east and four to the north to straighten us out, and we went on into the night and the storm. We had gone out into the night and storm so often that no heroine of melodrama could tell us anything about either. But being by this time completely disorientated, instead of traveling nine east and four north, as they say in the easy vernacular of the midwest, we went instead nine west and four south, and came out at a lonely crossroads, the kind at which a murderer might appropriately be buried. Our arithmetic was quite unequal to adding and subtracting our mistakes. Seeing a house with one light burning, I reached its door to ask directions. There, unashamed, through the lighted window, a lady sat in her nightdress, braiding her hair. I backed away, not wishing to embarrass her. It was not as if I were one of the neighbors, whom she seemed not to mind. A dismal quarter of a mile away, another light gleamed. I walked to it. An old woman cautiously put her head out of the door. She too was in an honest flannel nightie, and I concluded that the mid-west wears its nightgear unabashed. My sudden appearance, and especially the fact of my inquiring for a great city like Detroit, was not reassuring to her. She asked suspiciously if I were alone and at my answer, exclaimed, “Aint you afraid?” Her question gave me genuine amazement. I had forgotten that in the eastern section of our country people are afraid of each other, and I had grown so far away from it that I laughed and said, “Not in the least.” She seemed to think this marvelous. A motherly old soul, her sympathy struggled hard with her fear that I was bent on forcing a violent entrance into her house, but finally the baser suspicions won and she shut the door firmly on me until she could confer with “Pa.” He, being bolder, came openly to the porch in his,--was it pajamas or nightshirt?--I can hardly say, because not to embarrass him I only looked past his snowy beard and into his nice blue eyes. He directed us. We were to go seven north and thirteen west.