Leaving by the rear, I
went down the lane to the path which serves as a short cut to the
bridge. That I did this unseen by anybody is not so strange when
you consider the hour, and how the only person then living in the
lane was, in all probability, in her kitchen. It would have been
better for me, little as I might have recognised it at the time,
had she been where she could have witnessed both my going and
coming and faced me with the fact.
John Scoville, in his statement, says that after giving up his
search for his little girl, he wandered up the ravine before
taking the path back which led him through Dark Hollow. This was
false, as well as the story he told of leaving his stick by the
chestnut tree in the gully at foot of Ostrander Lane. For I was on
the spot, and I know the route by which he reached Dark Hollow and
also through whose agency the stick came to be there.
Read, and learn with what tricks the devil beguiles us men.
I was descending this path, heavily shadowed, as you know, by a
skirting of closely growing trees and bushes, when just where it
dips into the Hollow, I heard the sound of a hasty foot come
crashing up through the underbrush from the ravine and cross the
path ahead of me. A turn in the path prevented me from seeing the
man himself, but as you will perceive and as I perceived later
when circumstances recalled it to my mind, I had no need to see
him to know who it was or with what intent he took this method of
escape from the ravine into the fields leading to the highway.
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