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But as for the latter, she made no move; the door of the cab remained closed, like its occupant's mind, a mystery to the watcher. Twilight shadows lengthened, darkling, over the land; street-lights flashed up in long, radiant ranks. Across the promenade hotels and shops were lighted up; people began to gather round the tables beneath the awnings of an open-air cafe.
When these were swung back the full sweep of the southwest wind poured its mild freshness into the room. The apartment was decorated and furnished with every taste and luxury. In one corner was the occupant's couch, the frame inlaid with ivory and tortoise-shell, the mattress soft with the very choicest feathers of white German geese.
I made a hole in one of several sacks leaning against the wall, and which had been there probably since the occupant's death. It was excessively musty, but hunger prevented me from being particular, and rolling it up into little balls I swallowed several in rapid succession. Having eaten on till I had sated my appetite, I hauled up the pole with which I had made my escape from the vault below.
And a stack of five or six repeating rifles littered an adjacent corner. It was a man's abode, and the very simplicity of it, the lack of cheap ornamentation, the carelessness of self in it, suggested a great deal of the occupant's character.
Should there be any doubts, I will reply to them with the following experiment. Split lengthwise, the grub's abode leaves a half-tunnel wherein I can watch the occupant's doings. When left alone, it now gnaws the front of its gallery, now rests, fixed by its ambulacra to the two sides of the channel. I avail myself of these moments of quiet to inquire into its power of perceiving sounds.
So far as the occupant's title is concerned, it is immaterial whether it is on his own land or on that of another that he catches wild animals or birds, though it is clear that if he goes on another man's land for the sake of hunting or fowling, the latter may forbid him entry if aware of his purpose.
They walked slowly up and down the long aisles behind the Doctor, who stopped before each cot, and closely examined its occupant's tongue, pulse, and other indicators of his condition, and gave prescriptions, which the Steward wrote down, as to medicine and food.
The quiet monosyllable brought the rancher down to earth. He looked round at his companion with an inquiring glance. "Eh?" But Jim Thorpe had no further comment to offer. The two were sitting in the foreman's cabin, a small but roughly comfortable split-log hut, where elegance and tidiness had place only in the more delicate moments of its occupant's retrospective imagination.
It had once been called The Watch Tower, for reasons but vaguely known by the present generation of villagers. To-day it was generally styled The Pines. Yet even this had fallen into disuse, save on the occupant's letter paper. When any one asked where Rear Admiral Killigrew lived, he was directed to "the big white house at the top o' the hill." The Killigrews had not been born and bred there.
The officers of the vessel had evidently each enjoyed a cabin to himself, furnished according to the occupant's taste; and in every one there were articles of enormous value, while the silken cushions, thick-piled carpets, and dainty coverlets to the bunks might have led one to suppose that the cabins had been inhabited by delicate ladies rather than by savage pirates, to whom murder was an almost everyday occurrence.
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