On the right the dwelling of the Hatburns showed
vaguely through the mist. No one else could have been on the road. A
troubled expression settled on his glowing countenance, a pondering
doubt; then his mouth drew into a determined line.
"I'll have to go right up and ask," he said aloud.
He jumped down to the road, led the horses to a convenient sapling,
where he hitched them. Then he drew his belt tighter about his slender
waist and took a step forward. A swift frown scarred his brow, and he
turned and transferred the revolver to a pocket in his trousers.
The approach to the house was rough with stones and muddy clumps of
grass. A track, he saw, circled the dwelling to the back; but he walked
steadily and directly up to the shallow portico between windows with
hanging, partly slatted shutters. The house had been painted dark brown
a long while before; the paint had weathered and blistered into a
depressing harmony with the broken and mossy shingles of the roof, the
rust-eaten and sagging gutters festooning the ragged eaves.
David proceeded up the steps, hesitated, and then, his mouth firm and
hand steady, knocked. He waited for an apparently interminable space,
and then knocked again, more sharply. Now he heard voices within. He
waited rigidly for steps to approach, the door to open; but in vain.
They had heard, but chose to ignore his summons; and a swift cold anger
mounted in him. He could follow the path round to the back; but, he
told himself, he--David Kinemon--wouldn't walk to the Hatburns' kitchen
door.
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