“Now, the star of my destiny guide me!” said the baronet, peering curiously through the dusk. “Is this the road to my inheritance? It seems weird and neglected enough in all conscience.”
He dismounted, found the lock of the gate to be burst and useless, and decided to at least push his inquiries into the mysterious twilight beyond.
It needed an effort to force open the structure on rusted hinges and against the mat of weediness underfoot; but he did it, led his horse through, and swung-to the gate behind him. It went into place with a scream and a clang that cut piercingly into the sombre stillness. A bird or two fled twittering from the thickets, and then all sank into silence again.
The intruder paused a moment before pushing further. Peering hither and thither through the dank obscurity of trunks, whose interlacing boughs made a high fragrant vault at a lofty distance above him, he was aware of a little ruined lodge, ancient, tenantless, and all overgrown with lichen.
An eerie inheritance, in good sooth! He shivered, and, taking his horse by the bridle, led him on. The brute’s pasterns rustled in dead leaves; his hoofs thudded softly on spongy moss. To all appearance he traversed a drive making for the house; but from its character it might have been a natural alley in some primeval wood.
He had been given to understand that the caretaker had been forwarded certain directions for his reception. Now, as the wild and unordered nature of his property was brought home to him, he thought how inadequate to his present needs any preparation possible to the estate was like to be, and was half-inclined, late as the hour was, to ride back to Stockbridge—so cosily figured in his imagination the lights and good roast of the “First Inn,” with pretty Betty Pollack to serve them.
It was the reaction of a moment, and in a moment dismissed; for, whatever the spirit of the man, the good horse’s was already sufficiently tried.
Dismally cogitating he continued his way, and suddenly a new uneasiness was added to his apprehensions. Something was moving alongside him—keeping pace with him—flitting in and out at a little distance amongst the trees. It was spectral and soft-footed—a suggestion rather than a shape; but when he paused to look more closely, it was always gone. Still, if he moved again, there it was undiscernible in the dark thickset, slipping forward on a level with him, and so noiselessly that sometimes he thought it a mere trick of his fancy.
The tension on his nerves under this shadowy ordeal grew at length so taut, that he was fain to stop and cry out, if only for the relief of hearing his own voice in that ghost-haunted solitude.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Why are you dogging me like this?”