Can Such Things Be?

For a part of the distance between Auburn and Newcastle the road—­ first on one side of a creek and then on the other—­occupies the whole bottom of the ravine, being partly cut out of the steep hillside, and partly built up with bowlders removed from the creek-bed by the miners.  The hills are wooded, the course of the ravine is sinuous.  In a dark night careful driving is required in order not to go off into the water.  The night that I have in memory was dark, the creek a torrent, swollen by a recent storm.  I had driven up from Newcastle and was within about a mile of Auburn in the darkest and narrowest part of the ravine, looking intently ahead of my horse for the roadway.  Suddenly I saw a man almost under the animal’s nose, and reined in with a jerk that came near setting the creature upon its haunches.

“I beg your pardon,” I said; “I did not see you, sir.”

“You could hardly be expected to see me,” the man replied, civilly, approaching the side of the vehicle; “and the noise of the creek prevented my hearing you.”

I at once recognized the voice, although five years had passed since I had heard it.  I was not particularly well pleased to hear it now.

“You are Dr. Dorrimore, I think,” said I.

“Yes; and you are my good friend Mr. Manrich.  I am more than glad to see you—­the excess,” he added, with a light laugh, “being due to the fact that I am going your way, and naturally expect an invitation to ride with you.”

“Which I extend with all my heart.”

That was not altogether true.

Dr. Dorrimore thanked me as he seated himself beside me, and I drove cautiously forward, as before.  Doubtless it is fancy, but it seems to me now that the remaining distance was made in a chill fog; that I was uncomfortably cold; that the way was longer than ever before, and the town, when we reached it, cheerless, forbidding, and desolate.  It must have been early in the evening, yet I do not recollect a light in any of the houses nor a living thing in the streets.  Dorrimore explained at some length how he happened to be there, and where he had been during the years that had elapsed since I had seen him.  I recall the fact of the narrative, but none of the facts narrated.  He had been in foreign countries and had returned—­this is all that my memory retains, and this I already knew.  As to myself I cannot remember that I spoke a word, though doubtless I did.  Of one thing I am distinctly conscious:  the man’s presence at my side was strangely distasteful and disquieting—­so much so that when I at last pulled up under the lights of the Putnam House I experienced a sense of having escaped some spiritual peril of a nature peculiarly forbidding.  This sense of relief was somewhat modified by the discovery that Dr. Dorrimore was living at the same hotel.