IV.
DR. IZARD.
THE tramp, who was, as you have seen, not without some small means to make himself respected, paused for a moment in front of the tavern before deciding what direction he would take. Then he went east, or, to make matters clearer to my reader, followed the direction young Polly Earle had taken an hour or so before.
Being bent and old he walked slowly, but as the tavern from which he had emerged was near the end of the street, it was not long before he came upon the big church at the corner, beyond which was the open country and circling highroad.
“They spoke of a graveyard,” murmured he, pausing and gazing about him with eyes which seemed to have lost none of their penetration, however bent his figure or aged his face. “Ah! I think I see it!” And he rambled on in the darkness till he came to a picket fence. But this fence enclosed a dwelling-house, whose large and imposing bulk rose in deepest shadow beyond him, and he had to walk several rods farther before he came to the spot of glimmering headstones and drooping willows. A faint moon lent a ghostly light to the place, and as he stopped and bent his head over the intervening wall, weird glimpses were given him of snowy shafts and rounded hillocks, which may have accounted for the length of time he clung there without movement or sound.
But finally the dog whining at his heels, or the gleam of a light shining in the distance, recalled him to himself, and he moved, taking the direction of that light, though it led him over the cemetery wall and across such of the graves as lay along the border of the yard adjoining the large house of which I have previously spoken. The dog, who had not left him a moment since he joined him at the cave, shrank as he climbed the wall, and the old man took his course alone, treading as softly as he could, but yet making some noise as a broken twig snapped under his foot or he pressed down some tiny aspiring bush in his rude advance.
He was making for the light which shone from the window near the ground in the huge side of the great and otherwise unilluminated house he had passed a few minutes before. He had expected to be met by a fence like the one in front, but to his surprise he soon saw that the graveyard pressed close up to the house, and that there was a monument not ten yards from the very window he was approaching. He had paused at this monument, and was vainly trying to read the inscription which was cut deeply into the side turned toward the moon, when he heard a sudden sound, and, looking toward the house, saw that a door had opened in the blank side of the wall, and that the light had shifted from the window to this open square, where it was held high above the head of a remarkable looking man who was looking directly his way.
Convinced that this was Dr. Izard, he held his breath, and slunk as much into the shadow of the shaft as possible. Meanwhile he stared at the picture presented to his notice, and noted every outline of the noble head and small but finely proportioned form, that filled the illuminated gap before him. The face he could not see, but the attitude was eloquent, and conveyed so vividly an expression of strained listening and agitated doubt, that this by no means careless observer felt that his step had been heard, and that something more than common curiosity had drawn the doctor to the spot.
A sudden sense of his position among the graves, or the chill imparted by his close contact with the stone shaft against which he had flung himself, made the aged wanderer shiver, but his emotion, however occasioned, did not last long, for with a sigh that could be plainly heard across the short space, Dr. Izard withdrew his head and closed the door, leaving nothing to be seen in the dim blackness of the houseside but the one square of light which had previously attracted the stranger’s attention.
With careful step and bated breath, the latter left the tomb by which he had sought refuge, and advanced to this same wall, along which he crept till he reached this uncurtained window. A glimpse of the interior was what he wanted, but, as he stopped to listen, he found that he was likely to obtain more than this, for plainly to be heard in the almost death-like quiet, came the sound of two voices conversing, and he knew, perhaps by instinct, perhaps by ready reasoning, that they were the voices of the doctor and the pretty new heiress, Polly Earle.
To listen might have been a temptation to any man, but to this one it was almost a necessity. His first desire, however, was to see what was before him, and so, with more skill than one would expect, he bent a branch of the vine swaying about him, and, from behind its cover, peered into the shining panes that opened so invitingly beside him.