Page 38 - the-thirty-nine-steps

About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a
white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a
lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent,
the glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a
kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight.
The road swung over a bridge, and leaning on the parapet
was a young man.
He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water
with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with
a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated -
As when a Gryphon through the wilderness
With winged step, o’er hill and moory dale
Pursues the Arimaspian.
He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I
saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face.
‘Good evening to you,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s a fine night
for the road.’
The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast float-
ed to me from the house.
‘Is that place an inn?’ I asked.
‘At your service,’ he said politely. ‘I am the landlord, Sir,
and I hope you will stay the night, for to tell you the truth I
have had no company for a week.’
I pulled myself up on the parapet of the bridge and filled
my pipe. I began to detect an ally.
‘You’re young to be an innkeeper,’ I said.
‘My father died a year ago and left me the business. I live
there with my grandmother. It’s a slow job for a young man,
and it wasn’t my choice of profession.’

38 The Thirty-Nine Steps