It was not a question of being in possession of strange abilities, it was a question of being obsessed by some diabolical power--of being the prey of malignant demons avid to destroy.
The more deeply he thought upon all that had come to him, the more bewildered he became; and to avoid this tumult, which brought no result, he went out and wandered about the farm. His experience was like visiting a foreign country, for the men were either Swiss or German; and the walls of the farm-yard quite as un-American in their massiveness and their formal arrangement--a vivid contrast to the flimsy structures of the neighboring village. The servants (that is what they were, servants) treated him with the trained deference of those who for generations have touched their caps to the more fortunate beings of the earth, and these signs of subordination were distinctly soothing to the youth's disturbed condition of mind. Instantly, and without effort, he assumed the air of the young aristocrat they thought him.
He strolled down the road to the village, which was a collection of small frame cottages in neat lawns, surrounding a few general stores and a greasy, fly-specked post-office. Here was the unimaginative, the prosaic, perfectly embodied. Old men, bent and gray, were gossiping from benches and boxes under the awnings. Clerks in their shirt-sleeves were lolling over counters. A few farmers' teams stood at the iron hitching-posts with drowsy, low-hanging heads. Neither doubt nor dismay nor terror had footing here. The majesty of dawn, the mystery of midnight, did not touch these peaceful and phlegmatic souls. The spirit of man was to them less than an abstraction and the tumult of the city a far-off roar as of distant cataracts.
Furthermore, these matter-of-fact folk had abundant curiosity and no reverence, and they all stared at Victor with round, absorbent gaze, as if with candid intent to take full invoice of his clothing, and to know him again in any disguise. He heard them say, one after the other, as he passed along, "Visitor of Bartol's, I guess." And he could understand that this explanation really explained, for Bartol's "Castle" was the resting-place of many strange birds of passage.