Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/40

28 decided to walk. With his head bent down he walked slowly, striking the cracks in the pavement with the tip of his cane. From small gardens still tended and watered in this unkempt wilderness of brick and stucco, whiffs of delicate fragrance drifted out across the pavements, only to be stifled by the sickly odors that rose from the open sewer-mouths.

When he turned into the wide avenues where the old mansions stood, the air was fresher and the silence heavier. Desertion and darkness seemed to claim as their own this relic of a life that had already passed away. The dim, bulky shapes of the great houses stood back from the street, sullen, black, and morose, like the visions in a dream. Vines shrouded their solemn forms, and here and there clung to the support of an iron balcony rail, hanging down in the darkness like a veil that swayed and whispered in the breeze. In one porch a hall lamp was lit, and cast a pale and faltering light over an entrance that looked as full of menace and evil mystery as the opening to some bandit's cavern.

But Gault passed their iron gates, high between supporting pillars, without looking up. A man's dreams held him in a trance-like reverie. A man's perplexities destroyed the content of many serenely selfish years. He had come to what seemed to him the fateful mo-