MAP OF THE LOCALITIES.MAP OF THE LOCALITIES.
MAP OF THE LOCALITIES.
MAP OF THE LOCALITIES.
Knowing that my host was irregular as to his hours of return home at night,—sometimes arriving by another than the nine-o’clock train,—I was not surprised when I saw a figure lean over the wall for an instant within about twenty feet of me, pause a moment, and then cross over to the side on which I was. Seeing that he stopped, I spoke aloud these words, and none other, thinking of none other: “Hallo, Dan, is that you?”—for, though I could discover the figure and recognize its movements, there was too great a shade thrown over the wall to enable me to distinguish even the lineaments of a face so familiar to me as were those of my friend. To my appeal there was no reply, and then in an instant the impression came upon me that if it really was my friend, he was making an essay upon my nerves. So up to this moment I never had a thought apart from him. I did not notice the conduct of the dogs, or even think of them, for if I had done so,I never would have inquired if it was “Dan;”for they would have been away from me at the first footfall after he had passed the vicinity of the low bridge down in the hollow of thehill; or, having not done that, they would have been at the wall the moment his face looked over it. Nor did I observe that they kept unusually close to me. I did not even think that, if it was not him, it was extraordinary that the dogs did not, without more ado, make their assault; for as a vigilance committee they were extremely zealous in the discharge of their duty, and woe betide the trespasser upon those limits after dark if they once got scent of him! That sedate and usually almost apathetic Jack was equal to a cherubim with a flaming sword; and as to Jack the fighter, his mind was strictly judicial with regard to trespass. It was not till afterward, when the climax of this abrupt and singular apparition was reached, that my attention was directed to the behavior of my two companions. While I stood perfectly motionless, waiting for some recognition of my appeal, the figure advanced slowly in a direct line from the wall, leaving the shadow, and stopped before me, and not twenty feet away from me. I saw at once that it was somebody I had never seen before. When in the light, without even a weed to obstruct my vision, as soon as he stopped, I called again: “Speak, or I will fire!” I am not naturally of a blood-letting disposition, but somehow or other that threat came from me without any power or will of my mind to arrest it. It was an unmeaning and perhaps a cowardly speech, for he was alone, while I was armed with two powerful dogs, eitherone of whom would have vanquished him, had I but said the word. Nor had I a pistol to carry out, had I been so rash as to intend it, my foolish demonstration. It was at this period I observed especially the behavior of the dogs. Up to this time they had been quiescent, lying upon the grass in the full enjoyment of its freshness; but now they both got up, and I felt on each side of me the pressure of their bodies. They were evidently frightened, and, by the casual glance I gave them, induced to do so by the sensation of their touch, I saw that they were looking with every symptom of terror at the figure that stood so near us without a motion. And the figure. It never once turned its head directly toward me, but seemed to fix its look eastward over where the pine-trees broke the clear horizon on the murder-hill. This inert pose was preserved but for a moment; for, as quick as the flash of gunpowder, it wheeled as upon a pivot, and, making one movement, as of a man commencing to step out toward the wall, was gone! To my vision it never crossed the space between where it had stood and the outline of the shade thrown by the trees upon the ground. One step after turning was all I saw, and then it vanished. Can I describe this figure you will ask; and my reply is that I can, but not exactly in such a way as to satisfy the chief’s business-like interrogatory. Before I go any farther, I must say that, as I had nothing to do in getting up this apparition, Ido not see how any one can poke fun at me simply because I was there to see it. A man sees a star fall; he has no agency in the eccentric transaction, and is he to be ridiculed because there happens to be a tack loose in the celestial carpet whose dropping out he witnesses and tells of, and happens not to be astronomer enough to explain? Here was a moral and physical tack loose somewhere and somehow, and I had struck my vision on its point. What I saw I relate exactly as it happened, and nothing more, though I may be induced to meet the usual objections to the possibility of its occurrence, in a later portion of this narrative. I could, if I felt so inclined, stop my recital and talk by the folio about this affair; but it was a very different matter at the moment when that something, which would not reply to me, stood in the night light, clear and distinct as a marble statue, and cast one glance over toward the hill that held among its gray rocks a stain that would last there forever. But I half promised to describe this figure, this appearance, this apparition, and a few words will answer. It looked like painted air to begin with. An artist, sitting by my side and following my ideas, might render it to the life or death; but he would have to blend his matter-of-fact pencil with the vague vehicles of spiritualistic imagination. In the first place, there was no elaborate toilet; indeed I could not make out the fashion of the garment, taking it for granted that it wasdraped in the usual costume, being too absorbed by the complex and somewhat agitated train of thought which, commencing with the assumption that it was my friend, and which was suddenly relinquished, leaving me exposed to the rapid transitions of intellectual deductions so singularly called into action and so totally at variance with my habitual mental or nervous equanimity. I felt as a drowning man might feel who, admitting the fact that the water has got the master of him, lets that primary incident take care of itself, and looks only to some object by whose aid he may relieve himself from the desperate catastrophe. I was occupied more in the effort to recognize a human being in the figure that was before me than in making a tailor’s analysis of his apparel. One thing was evident,—he looked dark-gray from head to foot. Body he had, and legs, and arms, and a head; but the face I could not distinctly see, as he turned it from me; but there was an outline such as can be traced in shadows thrown by a dim lamp upon a rough-plastered wall,—and that is all I can say about it. Of course it is unsatisfactory, but I had no means or time for a fuller diagnosis.