“With your great ability, you must do that,” I answered, very gently, being touched with his humility and allowance of my opinion; “you will make a noble town of it. But when is the railway coming?”
“Not yet. We have first to get our Act; and a miserable-minded wretch, who owns nothing but a rabbit-warren, means to oppose it. Don't let us talk of him. It puts one out of patience when a man can not see his own interest. But come and see our assembly-rooms, literary institute, baths, etc., etc.—that is what we are urging forward now.”
“But may I not go first and look for my strange namesake? Would it be wrong of me to call upon her?”
“No harm whatever,” replied my companion; “likewise no good. Call fifty times, but you will get no answer. However, it is not a very great round, and you will understand my plans more clearly. Step out, my dear, as if you had got a troop of Mexicans after you. Ah, what a fine turn for that lot now!” He was thinking of the war which had broken out, and the battle of Bull's Run.
Without any such headlong speed, we soon came to the dwelling-place of the stranger, and really for once the good Major had not much overdone his description. Truly it was almost tumbling down, though massively built, and a good house long ago; and it looked the more miserable now from being placed in a hollow of the ground, whose slopes were tufted with rushes and thistles and ragwort. The lower windows were blocked up from within, the upper were shattered and crumbling and dangerous, with blocks of cracked stone jutting over them; and the last surviving chimney gave less smoke than a workman's homeward whiff of his pipe to comfort and relieve the air.
The only door that we could see was of heavy black oak, without any knocker; but I clinched my hand, having thick gloves on, and made what I thought a very creditable knock, while the Major stood by, with his blue-lights up, and keenly gazed and gently smiled.
“Knock again, my dear,” he said; “you don't knock half hard enough.”
I knocked again with all my might, and got a bruised hand for a fortnight, but there was not even the momentary content produced by an active echo. The door was as dead as every thing else.
“Now for my hammer,” my companion cried. “This house, in all sound law, is my own. I will have a 'John Doe and Richard Roe'—a fine action of ejectment. Shall I be barred out upon my own manor?”
With hot indignation he swung his hammer, but nothing came of it except more noise. Then the Major grew warm and angry.