With the way lighted by the lightning flashes, I followed the path up toward the lighted window and finally stood before a door. I mounted the rickety stairs up to the stoop and knocked.

I didn't have to wait. The door came open almost instantly. It was as if the people inside had been waiting for me, had, indeed, been expecting me.

The man who opened the door was small and grizzly. He wore a hat and pipe. The teeth that clenched the pipe were yellow; the eyes that looked out from under the drooping brim of the big black hat were a washed out blue.

"Well, come on in," he yelled at me. "Don't stay gawking there. The storm is about to break and it will wet your hide."

I stepped in and he closed the door behind me. I was in a kitchen. A large woman, with her body proportionately larger than her head, dressed in a shapeless Mother Hub-bard sort of garment and with a piece of cloth tied about her head, stood in front of the wood-burning stove on top of which supper was in the process of being cooked. A rickety table covered by a piece of green oilcloth was set for the meal and the light in the room came from a kerosene lantern set in the center of the table.

"I'm sorry to trouble you," I said, "but I'm stuck just down the road. And I would guess that I am lost as well."

"These here be tangly roads," said the man, "for one who ain't used to them. They wind about a lot and some of them end up going nowhere. Where might you be headed, stranger?"

"Pilot Knob," I said.

" He nodded sagely. "You took the wrong turning just down the road a piece."

"I was wondering," I said, "if you could hitch up a horse and pull me back onto the-road. The car skidded and the back wheels went into the ditch. I'll be more than willing to pay you for your trouble."