s announced the vehicle was at the door.

Ten minutes later and I and my escort were bowling merrily over the
ground in the direction of the Crow's Nest. It was early autumn, and the
cool evening air, fragrant with the mellowness of the luscious Virginian
pippin, was tinged also with the sadness inseparable from the demise of
a long and glorious summer. Evidences of decay and death were
everywhere--in the brown fallen leaves of the oaks and elms; in the bare
and denuded ditches. Here a giant mill-wheel, half immersed in a dark,
still pool, stood idle and silent; there a hovel, but recently inhabited
by hop-pickers, was now tenantless, its glassless windows boarded over,
and a wealth of dead and rotting vegetable matter in thick profusion
over the tiny path and the single stone doorstep.

"Is it always as quiet and deserted as this?" I asked of my companion,
who continually cracked his whip as if he liked to hear the
reverberations of its echoes.

"Always," was the reply, "and sometimes more so. You ain't used to the
country?"

"Not very. I want to try it by way of a change. Are you well versed in
the cry of birds? What was that?"

We were fast approaching an exceedingly gloomy bit of the road where
there were plantations on each side, and the trees united their
fantastically forked branches overhead. I thought I had never seen so
dismal-looking a spot, and a sudden lowering of the temperature made me
draw my overcoat tighter round me.

"That--oh, a night bird of some sort," Mr. Baldwin replied. "An ugly
sound, wasn't it? Beastly things, I can't imagine why they were created.
Whoa--steady there, steady."

The horse reared as he spoke, and taking a violent plunge forward, set
off at a wild gallop. A moment later, and I uttered an exclamation of
astonishment. Keeping pace with us, although apparently not moving at
more than an ordinary walking pace, was a man of medium height, dressed
in a panama hat and albert coat. He had a thin, aquiline nose, a rather
pronounced chin, was clean-shaven, and had a startlingly white
complexion. By the side of him trotted two poodles, whose close-cropped
skins showed out with remarkable perspicuity.

"Who the deuce is he?" I asked, raising my voice to a shout on account
of the loud clatter made by the horse's hoofs and the wheels.

"Who? what?" Mr. Baldwin shouted in return.

"Why, the man walking along with us!"

"Man! I can see no man!" Mr. Baldwin growled.

I looked at hi