The evening was
dusking in, but by no means dark as yet, even though a dark cloud had
crept up from the west and overhung the plantation to the right.
I looked down the lane as I entered it, and again--yes, ladies, as
surely as before--I saw a man cross it from the garden gate and step
into the plantation!
"Who the man was I could not tell, the light being so uncertain.
Although he crossed the lane just where Coffin had crossed it and
disappeared in just the same manner, I had an impression that he was
not Coffin, and that his gait, for one thing, differed from Coffin's.
But I tell you this for what it is worth: I was startled, you may be
sure, and hurried down the lane after him even quicker than I had
hurried after the first man; but when I came to the stile, he, like
the first man, had vanished, and within the plantation it was
impossible by this time to see more than twenty yards deep.
"Again I turned and crossed the lane to the garden gate. A sort of
twilight lay over the turf between me and the summer-house, and
beneath the apple-trees skirting my path to it on the left you might
say that it was night; but the water at the foot of the garden threw
up a sort of glimmer, and there was a glimmer, too, on the vane above
the flagstaff.
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