He found himself shortly after eight at pause by the gate to the Bohun place. The night was dark and murmurous with a sibilant wind that sent the leaves drifting, softly clashing one with another. At the far end of the straight brick walk, up through the formal grounds, he could just see the glimmer of the stately columns, and, between them, to one side, a little twinkling light. The gate was closed, but he tried it and found it on the latch. He entered and scuffled up the walk, ankle deep in fallen leaves. His footfalls as he crossed the porch sounded startlingly loud by contrast; he even fancied a note of indignation in the cavernous echoes of the knocker on the front door. He waited with a thumping heart, aware that he was venturing where even fools would fear to tread.
An aged negro butler, one of the freed slaves brought from Virginia by the Bohuns, admitted him to the hall and took his card, smothering his own wonderment. For in those days nobody disturbed the silence and the peace of decay of the Bohun mansion save its master. And Duncan had long to wait in the wide, gloomy, musty hall before the servant returned.
"Cunnul Bohun will see yo', suh," he said, and ushered him into the library—a great, high-ceiled, shadowy room illuminated by a single lamp, tenanted by the old colonel alone.
Bohun received the young man standing: he was as courteous beneath his own roof as he was impossible away from it. A quaint old figure, with his grey hair tousled and his dressing-gown draped grotesquely from his shoulders, he stood by the fireplace, Duncan's card between his fingers, and bowed ceremoniously.
"Mr. Duncan, I believe?"
Nat returned the bow. "Yes, sir," he said. "Will you be good enough to pardon this intrusion, Colonel Bohun, and spare me five minutes of your time?"
The colonel nodded. "At your service, sir," he replied, and waited grimly—perhaps not unsuspicious of the nature of his visitor's errand, since he could not have been ignorant of his place in Radville.
Duncan had his own way of getting at things—generally more circuitous than now, though he struck on a tangent sufficiently acute momentarily to puzzle Bohun.
"May I inquire, sir, if you are acquainted with the firm of L.J. Bartlett & Company of New York?"
"I have heard of it, Mr. Duncan, through the newspapers."