And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes, this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at once, and without a doubt:
The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.
"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal fascination."
I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross this threshold to-night?"