THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS (CHAPS 6-7)

On Wednesday I started as agreed, taking with me a valise full of simple necessities and scientific data, including the hideous phonograph record, the Kodak prints, and the entire file of Akeley's correspondence.

As requested, I had told no one where I was going, for I could see that the matter demanded utmost privacy, even allowing for its most favorable turns.

the thought of actual mental contact with alien, outside entities was stupefying enough to my trained and somewhat prepared mind, and this being so, what might one think of its effect on the vast masses of uninformed laymen? I do not know whether dread or adventurous expectancy was uppermost in me as I changed trains at Boston and began the long westward run out of familiar regions into those I know less thoroughly.

Waltham, Concord, Ayer, Fitchburg, Gardner, Athol, My train reached Greenfield seven minutes late, but the northbound connecting express had been held.

Transferring in haste, I felt a curious breathlessness as the cars rumbled on through the early afternoon sunlight into territories I had always read of but had never before visited.

I knew I was entering an altogether older-fashioned and more primitive New England than the mechanized, urbanized, coastal and southern areas where all my life had been spent.

This was an unspoiled, ancestral New England without the foreigners and factory smoke, billboards, and concrete roads of the sections which modernity has touched.

There would be odd survivals of that continuous native life whose deep roots make it the one authentic outgrowth of the landscape, the continuous native life which keeps alive strange, ancient memories and fertilizes the soil for shadowy, marvelous, and seldom mentioned beliefs.

Now and then I saw the blue Connecticut River gleaming in the sun, and after leaving Northfield, we crossed it.

Ahead loomed green and cryptical hills, and when the conductor came around, I learned that I was at last in Vermont.

He told me to set my watch back an hour, since the northern hill country will have no dealings with newfangled daylight time schemes.

As I did so, it seemed to me that I was likewise turning the calendar back a century.

The train kept close to the river, and across in New Hampshire I could see the approaching slope of steep Watastiquit, about which singular old legends cluster.

Then streets appeared on my left, and a green island showed in the stream on my right.

People rose and filed to the door, and I followed them.

The cars stopped, and I alighted beneath the long train shed of the Brattleboro station.

Looking over the line of waiting motors, I hesitated a moment to see which one might turn out to be the Akeley Ford, but my identity was divine before I could take the initiative.

And yet it was clearly not Akeley himself who advanced to meet me with an outstretched hand and a mellowly phrased query as to whether I was indeed Mr. Albert N. Wilmarth of Arkham.

This man bore no resemblance to the bearded, grizzled Akeley of the snapshot, but was a younger and more urbane person, fashionably dressed, and wearing only a small, dark moustache.

His cultivated voice held an odd and almost disturbing hint of vague familiarity, though I could not definitely place it in my memory.

As I surveyed him, I heard him explaining that he was a friend of my prospective host who had come down from Townsend in his stead.

Akeley, he declared, had suffered a sudden attack of some asthmatic trouble and did not feel equal to making a trip in the outdoor air.

It was not serious, however, and there was to be no change in plans regarding my visit." I could not make out just how much this Mr.

Noyes, as he announced himself, though it seemed to me that his casual manner stamped him as a comparative outsider.

Remembering what a hermit Akeley had been, I was a trifle surprised at the ready availability of such a friend, but did not let my puzzlement deter me from entering the motor to which he gestured me.