Through the woods there ran at intervals long lines of broken rock, covered with moss--the ruins, evidently, of ancient stone fences. The land must have been, in former days, a farm, inhabited, cultivated, the home of human hopes and desires and labours, but now relapsed into solitude and wilderness. What could the life have been among these rugged and inhospitable Highlands, on this niggard and reluctant soil? Where was the house that once sheltered the tillers of this rude corner of the earth?
Here, perhaps, in the little clearing into which I now emerged. A couple of decrepit apple-trees grew on the edge of it, and dropped their scanty and gnarled fruit to feast the squirrels. A little farther on, a straggling clump of ancient lilacs, a bewildered old bush of sweetbrier, the dark-green leaves of a cluster of tiger-lilies, long past blooming, marked the grave of the garden. And here, above this square hollow in the earth, with the remains of a crumbling chimney standing sentinel beside it, here the house must have stood.
What joys, what sorrows once centred around this cold and desolate hearth-stone? What children went forth like birds from this dismantled nest into the wide world? What guests found refuge----"Take care! stand back! There is a rattlesnake in the old cellar."The voice, even more than the words, startled me. I drew away suddenly, and saw, behind the ruins of the chimney, a man of an aspect so striking that to this day his face and figure are as vivid in my memory as if it were but yesterday that Ihad met him.
He was dressed in black, the coat of a somewhat formal cut, a long cravat loosely knotted in his rolling collar. His head was bare, and the coal-black hair, thick and waving, was in some disorder. His face, smooth and pale, with high forehead, straight nose, and thin, sensitive lips--was it old or young? Handsome it certainly was, the face of a man of mark, a man of power. Yet there was something strange and wild about it. His dark eyes, with the fine wrinkles about them, had a look of unspeakable remoteness, and at the same time an intensity that seemed to pierce me through and through. It was as if he saw me in a dream, yet measured me, weighed me with a scrutiny as exact as it was at bottom indifferent.
But his lips were smiling, and there was no fault to be found, at least, with his manner. He had risen from the broad stone where he had evidently been sitting with his back against the chimney, and came forward to greet me.
"You will pardon the abruptness of my greeting? I thought you might not care to make acquaintance with the present tenant of this old house--at least not without an introduction.""Certainly not," I answered, "you have done me a real kindness, which is better than the outward form of courtesy.
But how is it that you stay at such close quarters with this unpleasant tenant? Have you no fear of him?""Not the least in the world," he answered, laughing. "Iknow the snakes too well, better than they know themselves.
It is not likely that even an old serpent with thirteen rattles, like this one, could harm me. I know his ways.
Before he could strike I should be out of reach.""Well," said I, "it is a grim thought, at all events, that this house, once a cheerful home, no doubt, should have fallen at last to be the dwelling of such a vile creature.""Fallen!" he exclaimed. Then he repeated the word with a questioning accent--"fallen? Are you sure of that? The snake, in his way, may be quite as honest as the people who lived here before him, and not much more harmful. The farmer was a miser who robbed his mother, quarrelled with his brother, and starved his wife. What she lacked in food, she made up in drink, when she could. One of the children, a girl, was a cripple, lamed by her mother in a fit of rage. The two boys were ne'er-do-weels who ran away from home as soon as they were old enough. One of them is serving a life-sentence in the State prison for manslaughter. When the house burned down some thirty years ago, the woman escaped. The man's body was found with the head crushed in--perhaps by a falling timber. The family of our friend the rattlesnake could hardly surpass that record, I think.
But why should we blame them--any of them? They were only acting out their natures. To one who can see and understand, it is all perfectly simple, and interesting--immensely interesting."It is impossible to describe the quiet eagerness, the cool glow of fervour with which he narrated this little history. It was the manner of the triumphant pathologist who lays bare some hidden seat of disease. It surprised and repelled me a little;yet it attracted me, too, for I could see how evidently he counted on my comprehension and sympathy.
"Well," said I, "it is a pitiful history. Rural life is not all peace and innocence. But how came you to know the story?""I? Oh, I make it my business to know a little of everything, and as much as possible of human life, not excepting the petty chronicles of the rustics around me. It is my chief pleasure. I earn my living by teaching boys. Ifind my satisfaction in studying men. But you are on a journey, sir, and night is falling. I must not detain you.
