Beside her, after much difficulty, I recognized the one
strange and unrelated person in all the company, an old man who had
always been mysterious to me. I could see his thin, bending
figure. He wore a narrow, long-tailed coat and walked with a
stick, and had the same "cant to leeward" as the wind-bent trees on
the height above.
This was Captain Littlepage, whom I had seen only once or
twice before, sitting pale and old behind a closed window; never
out of doors until now. Mrs. Todd always shook her head gravely
when I asked a question, and said that he wasn't what he had been
once, and seemed to class him with her other secrets. He might
have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted
corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed
into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight
once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great
fading bloodroot leaves.
I could see that she was trying to keep pace with the old
captain's lighter steps.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38