He stopped--he listened--he stared suspiciously into the profound darkness. Then he thought he heard a rustling of the leaves near him, and he hallooed, 'Who's there?' But no answer came.
So, taking heart of grace, he marched on, still zealously peering among the trees, until, coming to an opening in the pathway, he more distinctly saw a tall, white figure, standing in an ape-like attitude, with its arms extended, grasping two boughs, and stooping, as if peeping cautiously, as he approached.
The good attorney drew up and stared at this gray phantasm, saying to himself, 'Yes,' in a sort of quiet hiss.
He stopped in a horror, and as he gazed, the figure suddenly drew back and disappeared.
'Very pleasant this!' said the attorney, after a pause, recovering a little. 'What on earth can it be?'
Jos. Larkin could not tell which way it had gone. He had already passed the midway point, where this dark path begins to descend through the ravine into Redman's Dell. He did not like going forward--but to turn back might bring him again beside the mysterious figure. And though he was not, of course, afraid of ghosts, nor in this part of the world, of robbers, yet somehow he did not know what to make of this gigantic gray monkey.
So, not caring to stay longer, and seeing nothing to be gained by turning back, the attorney buttoned the top button of his coat, and holding his head very erect, and placing as much as he could of the path between himself and the side where the figure had disappeared, marched on steadily. It was too dark, and the way not quite regular enough, to render any greater speed practicable.
From the thicket, as he proceeded, he heard a voice--he had often shot woodcocks in that cover--calling in a tone that sounded in his ears like banter, 'Mark--Mark--Mark--Mark.'
He stopped, holding his breath, and the sound ceased.
'Well, this certainly is not usual,' murmured Mr. Larkin, who was a little more perturbed than perhaps he quite cared to acknowledge even to himself. 'Some fellow perhaps watching for a friend--or tricks, maybe.'
Then the attorney, trying his supercilious smile in the dark, listened again for a good while, but nothing was heard except those whisperings of the wind which poets speak of. He looked before him with his eyebrows screwed, in a vain effort to pierce the darkness, and the same behind him; and then after another pause, he began uncomfortably to move down the path once more.