"Burroughs, Edgar Rice - The Oakdale Affair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

the well ordered precincts of lawabiding Oakdale; but
to-night there was at least one and this one was deeply
grateful for the gloomy walks along which he hurried
toward the limits of the city.

At last he found himself upon a country road with
the odors of Spring in his nostrils and the world before
him. The night noises of the open country fell strangely
upon his ears accentuating rather than relieving the my-
riad noted silence of Nature. Familiar sounds became
unreal and weird, the deep bass of innumerable bull
frogs took on an uncanny humanness which sent a half
shudder through the slender frame. The burglar felt a
sad loneliness creeping over him. He tried whistling in
an effort to shake off the depressing effects of this seem-
ing solitude through which he moved; but there re-
mained with him still the hallucination that he moved
alone through a strange, new world peopled by invisible
and unfamiliar forms--menacing shapes which lurked in
waiting behind each tree and shrub.

He ceased his whistling and went warily upon the
balls of his feet, lest he unnecessarily call attention to
his presence. If the truth were to be told it would chron-
icle the fact that a very nervous and frightened burglar
sneaked along the quiet and peaceful country road out-
side of Oakdale. A lonesome burglar, this, who so craved
the companionship of man that he would almost have
welcomed joyously the detaining hand of the law had
it fallen upon him in the guise of a flesh and blood po-
lice officer from Oakdale.

In leaving the city the youth had given little thought
to the practicalities of the open road. He had thought,
rather vaguely, of sleeping in a bed of new clover in
some hospitable fence corner; but the fence corners
looked very dark and the wide expanse of fields be-
yond suggested a mysterious country which might be
peopled by almost anything but human beings.

At a farm house the youth hesitated and was almost
upon the verge of entering and asking for a night's lodg-
ing when a savage voiced dog shattered the peace of
the universe and sent the burglar along the road at a
rapid run.

A half mile further on a straw stack loomed large
within a fenced enclosure. The youth wormed his way
between the barbed wires determined at last to let
nothing prevent him from making a cozy bed in the