So, not caring to stay longer, and seeing nothing to be gained by turning back, the attorney buttoned the top button of his coat, and holding his head very erect, and placing as much as he could of the path between himself and the side where the figure had disappeared, marched on steadily. It was too dark, and the way not quite regular enough, to render any greater speed practicable.
From the thicket, as he proceeded, he heard a voice—he had often shot woodcocks in that cover—calling in a tone that sounded in his ears like banter, 'Mark—Mark—Mark—Mark.'
He stopped, holding his breath, and the sound ceased.
'Well, this certainly is not usual,' murmured Mr. Larkin, who was a little more perturbed than perhaps he quite cared to acknowledge even to himself. 'Some fellow perhaps watching for a friend—or tricks, maybe.'
Then the attorney, trying his supercilious smile in the dark, listened again for a good while, but nothing was heard except those whisperings of the wind which poets speak of. He looked before him with his eyebrows screwed, in a vain effort to pierce the darkness, and the same behind him; and then after another pause, he began uncomfortably to move down the path once more.
In a short time the same voice, with the same uncertain echo among the trees, cried faintly, 'Mark—Mark,' and then a pause; then again, 'Mark—Mark—Mark,' and then it grew more distant, and sounded among the trees and reverberations of the glen like laughter.
'Mark—ha—ha—hark—ha—ha—ha—hark—Mark—Mark—ha—ha—hark!'
'Who's there?' cried the attorney, in a tone rather ferocious from fright, and stamping on the path. But his summons and the provocation died away together in the profoundest silence.
Mr. Jos. Larkin did not repeat his challenge. This cry of 'Mark!' was beginning to connect itself uncomfortably in his mind with his speculations about his wealthy client, which in that solitude and darkness began to seem not so entirely pure and disinterested as he was in the habit of regarding them, and a sort of wood-demon, such as a queer little schoolfellow used long ago to read a tale about in an old German story-book, was now dogging his darksome steps, and hanging upon his flank with a vindictive design.
Jos. Larkin was not given to fancy, nor troubled with superstition. His religion was of a comfortable, punctual, business-like cast, which according with his genius—denied him, indeed, some things for which, in truth, he had no taste—but in no respect interfered with his main mission upon earth, which was getting money. He had found no difficulty hitherto in serving God and Mammon. The joint business prospered. Let us suppose it was one of those falterings of faith, which try the best men, that just now made him feel a little queer, and gave his thoughts about Mark Wylder, now grown habitual, that new and ghastly complexion which made the situation so unpleasant.