From that, too, he emerged; and soon appeared to be
a thin elderly figure, of a dark man with gray hair, bent, as it seemed
to Middleton, with infirmity, for his figure still stooped even in the
intervals when he did not appear to be tracking the ground. But
Middleton could not but be surprised at the singular appearance the
figure had of setting its foot, at every step, just where a previous
footstep had been made, as if he wanted to measure his whole pathway in
the track of somebody who had recently gone over the ground in advance of
him. Middleton was sitting at the foot of an oak; and he began to feel
some awkwardness in the consideration of what he would do if Mr.
Eldredge--for he could not doubt that it was he--were to be led just to
this spot, in pursuit of his singular occupation. And even so it proved.
Middleton could not feel it manly to fly and hide himself, like a guilty
thing; and indeed the hospitality of the English country gentleman in
many cases gives the neighborhood and the stranger a certain degree of
freedom in the use of the broad expanse of ground in which they and their
forefathers have loved to sequester their residences. The figure kept
on, showing more and more distinctly the tall, meagre, not unvenerable
features of a gentleman in the decline of life, apparently in ill-health;
with a dark face, that might once have been full of energy, but now
seemed enfeebled by time, passion, and perhaps sorrow.
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