path.
When I came down low enough upon the zig-zag descent, to see him again,
I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train
had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear. He
had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand
crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and
watchfulness, that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.
I resumed my downward way, and, stepping out upon the level of the
railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man, with
a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and
dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged
stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way, only a
crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the
other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance
to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous,
depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this
spot, that it had an earthy deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed
through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.
Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not even then
removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when
I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an
unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up
within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newlyawakened
interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am
far from sure of the terms I used, for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel's mouth,
and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and then looked at
me.
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?
He answered in a low voice: 'Don't you know it is?'
The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and the
saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether
there may have been infection in his mind.
In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in his eyes some
latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.
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