He seemed surprised at this, and glanced quickly to the right and left, as if to assure himself that he had been going right.
“Yes,” he muttered, apparently satisfied on this head. “Right before me was the spot—the creek and the cabin. I can’t be mistaken. These old trees I remember well—every one of them. But there’s a clearing now—perhaps a plantation,—and the old shanty gone altogether.”
Without finishing the reflection he kept onward, though slowly, and with greater caution, increasing as he drew nearer to the open ground. He appeared to approach it stealthily, step by step, as if stalking a herd of deer.
He was soon on the edge of the opening, though still under cover of thick woods.
A stream made the line of demarcation between them.
On its opposite side, about twenty yards from the bank, he saw a neat farm-house, with a spacious porch in front, and surrounded by fields. There were outbuildings at the back, with sheds and corn-cribs; while in front a fenced enclosure, half garden half orchard, extended down to the stream, which formed its bottom boundary.
Just opposite this enclosure the stranger had stopped, the moment he caught sight of the house.
“As I anticipated;” he muttered to himself.
Changed—everything changed!—the cabin cleared away, and the trees. Jerry Rook gone—perhaps dead. Some stranger in his place;—and she gone too—grown up—and—and—
A choking sigh forbade the pronunciation of some word that struggled for utterance—the expression of some painful thought, made manifest by the dark shadow that swept across the countenance of the speaker.