I
FOR a part of the distance between Auburn and Newcastle the road—first on
one side of a creek and then on the other—occupies the whole bottom of
the ravine, being partly cut out of the steep hillside, and partly built
up with bowlders removed from the creek-bed by the miners. The hills are
wooded, the course of the ravine is sinuous. In a dark night careful
driving is required in order not to go off into the water. The night
that I have in memory was dark, the creek a torrent, swollen by a recent
storm. I had driven up from Newcastle and was within about a mile of
Auburn in the darkest and narrowest part of the ravine, looking intently
ahead of my horse for the roadway. Suddenly I saw a man almost under the
animal’s nose, and reined in with a jerk that came near setting the
creature upon its haunches.
“I beg your pardon,” I said; “I did not see you, sir.”
“You could hardly be expected to see me,” the man replied, civilly,
approaching the side of the vehicle; “and the noise of the creek
prevented my hearing you.”
I at once recognized the voice, although five years had passed since I
had heard it. I was not particularly well pleased to hear it now.
“You are Dr. Dorrimore, I think,” said I.
“Yes; and you are my good friend Mr. Manrich. I am more than glad to see
you—the excess,” he added, with a light laugh, “being due to the fact
that I am going your way, and naturally expect an invitation to ride with
you.”
“Which I extend with all my heart.”
That was not altogether true.
Dr. Dorrimore thanked me as he seated himself beside me, and I drove
cautiously forward, as before. Doubtless it is fancy, but it seems to me
now that the remaining distance was made in a chill fog; that I was
uncomfortably cold; that the way was longer than ever before, and the
town, when we reached it, cheerless, forbidding, and desolate. It must
have been early in the evening, yet I do not recollect a light in any of
the houses nor a living thing in the streets. Dorrimore explained at
some length how he happened to be there, and where he had been during the
years that had elapsed since I had seen him. I recall the fact of the
narrative, but none of the facts narrated. He had been in foreign
countries and had returned—this is all that my memory retains, and this I
already knew. As to myself I cannot remember that I spoke a word, though
doubtless I did. Of one thing I am distinctly conscious: the man’s
presence at my side was strangely distasteful and disquieting—so much so
that when I at last pulled up under the lights of the Putnam House I
experienced a sense of having escaped some spiritual peril of a nature
peculiarly forbidding. This sense of relief was somewhat modified by the
discovery that Dr. Dorrimore was living at the same hotel.