The view ahead, over the boot, was blackness, bordered by spidery trees and branches whipping in the wind. Occasionally they passed houses sitting well back from the road, a lighted window gleaming cozily. And ever, as they moved, the storm seemed to gather force.
Graves noticed this and, at length, when his nervousness had reached the breaking point, screamed a question in his companion’s ear. They had attempted no conversation during the ride, the lawyer, whose contemptuous opinion of the locality and all its inhabitants was now a conviction, feeling that the result would not be worth the effort, and the captain busy with his driving.
“It is blowing worse than ever, isn’t it?” yelled the nervous Graves.
“Hey? No, just about the same. It’s dead sou’-west and we’re getting out of the woods, that’s all. Up on those bare hills we catch the full force of it right off the Sound. Be there pretty soon now, if this Old Hundred of a horse would quit walkin in his ’sleep and really move. Them lights ahead are South Denboro.”
The lights were clustered at the foot of a long and rather steep hill. Down the declivity bounced and rocked the buggy. The horse’s hoofs sounded hollow on the planks of a bridge. The road narrowed and became a village street, bordered and arched by tall trees which groaned and threshed in the hurricane. The rain, as it beat in over the boot, had, so the lawyer fancied, a salty taste.
The captain bent down. “Say, Mister,” he shouted, “where was it you wanted to stop? Who is it you’re lookin’ for?”
“What?”
“I say—Heavens to Betsy! how that wind does screech!—I say where’bouts shall I land you. This is South Denboro. Whose house do you want to go to?”
“I’m looking for one of your leading citizens. Elisha Warren is his name.”
“What?”