Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/291

 Findellen, munching crackers and cheese that he had bought from a grocery store, and keeping an occasional eye on the corrugations of the automobile track, to make sure that it was still with him. The road slanted obliquely up the side of a ridge that was too steep to be cleared for farming, and Barney could see nothing but bushes, trees, and undergrowth. He could hear nothing but the twilight song of a wood-bird. He neither looked nor listened. In animate or inanimate nature he had, at his most leisurely moments, only sufficient interest to throw a stone at it. Just now, he was not in a holiday mood to try his aim on anything. He had natural human instincts, even if he did not belong to a gun club.

At the top of the hill the road paused at the turn to show him a panorama of the flats in which Findellen and the railroad lay, under an evening mist. He did not admire the view, although it was admirable. He thought the street lights made a poor showing after New York—as if the place were living