"Allan Dorris, if you are from Nowhere-in-Particular, you are at home again."
CHAPTER II.
THE LOCKS.
From the southern windows of The Locks, Allan Dorris looked with curious interest the day after his arrival, and the week and the month following, for he remained there for that length of time without going out, except to walk along the country roads for exercise, where he occasionally met wagons containing men who cursed the town they were leaving for its dullness.
The dwellings of Davy's Bend were built upon hills sloping toward the little valley where the business houses were, and which poured a flood of water and mud into the long streets in rainy weather through gaping gullies of yellow clay. The rains seemed to be so fierce and frequent there that in the course of time they had cut down the streets, leaving the houses perching on hills above them, which were reached by flights of steps; and this impression was strengthened by the circumstance that it was a wet time, for it rained almost incessantly.
The houses were a good way apart, so far as he could see from his southern windows; and this circumstance caused him to imagine that the people were suspicious of each other, and he noticed that while many of them had once been of a pretending character, they were now generally neglected; and that there was a quiet air everywhere that reminded him of the country visited in his walks.
The houses themselves appeared to look at him with a cynical air, as the people did, as if to intimate that he need not hope to surprise them with his importance, or with anything he might do, for their quiet streets had once resounded to the tread of busy feet, and they had seen strangers before, and knew the ways of men. Some of the dwellings perching on the hills, deserted now except as to bats and owls, resembled unfortunate city men in a village; for there was a conspicuous air of decayed propriety about them, and an attempt at respectability that would have been successful but for lack of means. These in particular, he thought, made faces at him, and sneered as he passed through their part of the town in his walks to and from the country roads.
Several times he heard parties of men passing his house at night, talking loudly to make themselves heard above the jolting of their wagons; and these usually had something to say about the new owner of The Locks, from which he imagined that there was much speculation in the town concerning him. The house in which he lived was such a gloomy place, and he was shut up in it alone for such a length of time, that he came to listen to the sound of human voices with pleasure, and often went to the windows to watch for the approach of wagons, that he might hear the voices of their occupants; for there were no solitary travellers that way, and while the men may have been dissatisfied with themselves and their surroundings, they at least had company. He longed to join these parties, and go with them to their homes, for he thought the companionship of rough men and their families would be preferable to the stillness of his house; but the wagons drove on, and Allan Dorris returned to his walk across the room, and back again.
From the window most patronized by him in his lonely hours he could see a long stretch of the river, and at a point opposite the town a steam ferry was moored. Usually smoke was to be seen flying from its pipes during the middle hours of the day, as it made a few lazy trips from one shore to the other; but occasionally it was not disturbed at all, and sat quietly upon the water like a great bird from morning until night.