Aladdin O'Brien, page 59 by Gouverneur Morris
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bent against the wind, or he would have seen it before, for it was a notable landmark in that part of the world, and showed him that he had been making way, not toward his destination, but toward the wilderness.
He gazed up at the great black blasted pine, its waist the height of a tall tree, and its two lonely lightning-scathed and white arms stretched out like a malediction; and for a moment he had to take himself in hand. After a little he mastered the fear that had seized him.
"It's only a poor old lonely vegetable out in the cold," he said. "And it shows us exactly where we are and exactly which way we have to go."
He set himself right, and, with head lowered and hands clenched, again started on. But he was beginning to be very much bored, and sensible that his legs were not accustomed to being used so hard. Furthermore, there was a little difficulty--not by any means an insurmountable one--in steering straight, because of the constantly varying point of the compass in which the wind blew. He went on for a long time . . . .
He began to look for the high ground to decline, as it should, about now, if it was the high ground he took it for. "I ought to be getting somewhere," he said.
And, God help him! tired out, half frozen and very foot-sore, he was getting somewhere, for, glancing up, he again beheld the gigantic and demoniac shape of the blasted pine.
It is on prairies and among mountains, far from the habitations of men, that man is most readily terrified before nature, and not on the three-mile primrose way from a railway accident to a house-party. But for a moment cold terror struck at Aladdin like a serpent, and the marrow in his bones froze. Before he could succeed in reducing this awful feeling to one of acute anxiety alone, he had to talk to himself and explain things as to a child.
"Then it is true, Troubles, old man," he said, "about a person's tendency to go to the left. That's interesting, isn't it? But what do we care? Being gifted with a certain