“Two miles, sir,” Bates replied. “There’s no way over but the hack in winter. In summer the steamer comes right into our dock.”
“My legs need stretching; I’ll walk,” I suggested, drawing the cool air into my lungs. It was a still, starry October night, and its freshness was grateful after the hot sleeper. Bates accepted the suggestion without comment. We walked to the end of the platform, where the hackman was already tumbling my trunks about, and after we had seen them piled upon his nondescript wagon, I followed Bates down through the broad quiet street of the village. There was more of Annandale than I had imagined, and several tall smoke-stacks loomed here and there in the thin starlight.
“Brick-yards, sir,” said Bates, waving his hand at the stacks. “It’s a considerable center for that kind of business.”
“Bricks without straw?” I asked, as we passed a radiant saloon that blazed upon the board walk.
“Beg pardon, sir, but such places are the ruin of men,”—on which remark I based a mental note that Bates wished to impress me with his own rectitude.
He swung along beside me, answering questions with dogged brevity. Clearly, here was a man who had reduced human intercourse to a basis of necessity. I was to be shut up with him for a year, and he was not likely to prove a cheerful jailer. My feet struck upon a graveled highway at the end of the village street, and I heard suddenly the lapping of water.
“It’s the lake, sir. This road leads right out to the house,” Bates explained.
I was doomed to meditate pretty steadily, I imagined, on the beauty of the landscape in these parts, and I was rejoiced to know that it was not all cheerless prairie or gloomy woodland. The wind freshened cud blew sharply upon us off the water.
“The fishing’s quite good in season. Mr. Glenarm used to take great pleasure in it. Bass,—yes, sir. Mr. Glenarm held there was nothing quite equal to a black bass.”
I liked the way the fellow spoke of my grandfather. He was evidently a loyal retainer. No doubt he could summon from the past many pictures of my grandfather, and I determined to encourage his confidence.