Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Oakdale Affair Edgar Rice Burroughs

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.