As he sauntered along the road and nodded vaguely to the few tanned expressionless faces which passed him he sought to place his thoughts in order and achieve a sort of deductive acumen so far as the Westcotts were concerned. He would consider Jeffrey Westcott first of all. Or, no, he would take the farm first and its occupants last. What had he known about Westcott before he had been called to the farm the preceding night? Practically nothing at all. He had been aware of a farm, however, because he had passed it numberless times. It was a large farm for it ran all the way to the profitless soil of Briony Wood. And Dreeme sought to fix the farm firmly in his mind, for, after all, the soil played its part in the development of any man. It was the soil that counted, the soil that colored the mind. Well, the farm faced on the Leeminster Road and it boasted the usual sprawling building with a number of ells built on like afterthoughts. There were several outhouses that faced the reddish dirt of the road and the untidy yard. Then there were the fields in back of the whitewashed structures. Dreeme had never walked through them, but he imagined they were, for the most part, uncultivated. Except for occasional patches of ploughed land, small squares of fecundity in a neglected expanse, they stretched sere and yellow in the parching sun or green and unkempt through the heavy rains to the slightly elevated territory upon which grew the acre or so of closely set trees which were called Briony Wood. This wood was a gloomy and deserted place, deserted, perhaps, because one could not reach it without first passing through Westcott’s land, and there were good reasons for not taking this weed-choked road. Behind Briony Wood was Nigger Swamp or perhaps it would be better to say that Briony Wood degenerated into Nigger Swamp. Dreeme had never been near Nigger Swamp, but he had heard of it as a miasmic stretch of sunken land into which the Saccarac River seeped through subterranean channels. It was an unhealthy spot, the home of buzzing insects and slimy reptiles. As to why it was called Nigger Swamp, Dreeme possessed no idea. Perhaps negroes had been secreted there during the pre-Civil War days of the Underground Railroad, those feverish times when the escaped slaves were rushed through to the Canadian border. Anyway, it was obvious that black men had had something to do with the swamp in the past. Or, perhaps again, it was merely the darkness and desolation of the place that occasioned the cognomen. These things, however, threw no light on Jeffrey Westcott. He could hardly be connected with Nigger Swamp. Indeed, it was difficult to associate him with the farm. It was true that he lived there constantly and that he cultivated a corner of his extensive holding, but that was all. He was not primarily a farmer.
Having disposed of the land and having reached no conclusions whatsoever, Dreeme, who had reached the ruins of the old burned mill, a black gaping maw of crumbling bricks and beams, paused to look back and down at Marlborough. It seemed a pleasant enough town in the bright sunlight with its white and yellow houses, its gonfalons of thin smoke waving from the chimneys, and its shade trees rising in the narrow streets. From this distance it was New England to the backbone, marked by that sweet austerity and pleasant simplicity that is the aspect of the older communities. There was nothing gothic or strained or unearthly about it, and yet, looking back so, Dreeme was more than ever convinced of the mystery that hovered over the town. It was an obsession with him now. The houses were masks and their true features were never turned to the light of the day. Beside him the destroyed mill gloomed, and gazing into its gutted walls through the wide square of doorway he could see the black cell of the interior and the broken embrasure of a crumbling window that overlooked the millpond. Proceeding on his way to the faint music of crunching footsteps, Dreeme reached the small wooden bridge that crossed the Saccarac River, and here he paused to lean on the worn railing and gaze down on the sparkling stream that wandered on at so sedate and silent a pace. It was pleasant to watch the water while the warm sun caressed the back of his head. The river ran like a dream, like something seen in a trance. He must go on with his surmises now, for his unquiet mind pricked him constantly forward and along the Leeminster Road. Well, he had disposed of the land and learned nothing from it. There remained the human beings who occupied that land. He would take them in order, considering the less important first.
There was the
