Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery — Context and Discussion

They were friendly, wholesome, straightforward eyes, lit with the joy of living; wide-open and girlish. The brows were fine and dark above them, and above these a clear, girlish forehead with never a studied line. Her hair was brown and shot with gold--indeed, in the sunlight, it looked like old, red gold, finely spun.

She was tanned by the Florida sun, yet there was a bright color-spot in each cheek. I thought she had rather a wistful mouth, rather full lips, half-pouting in some girlish fancy. Of course she hadn't observed me yet. She was riding easily, evidently thinking herself wholly alone.

Her form was slender and girlish, of medium height, yet her slender hands at the reins held her big horse in perfect control. The heels of her trim little shoes touched his side, and the animal leaped lightly over a fallen log. Then she saw me, and her expression changed.

It was, however, still unstudied and friendly. The cold look of indifference I had expected and which is such a mark of ill-breeding among certain of her class, didn't put in its appearance. I removed my hat, and she drew her horse up beside me.

It hadn't occurred to me she would actually stop and talk. It had been rather too much to hope for. And I knew I felt a curious little stir of delight all over me at the first sound of her friendly, gentle voice.

"I suppose you are Mr. Killdare?" she said quietly.

Every one knows how a man quickens at the sound of his own name. "Yes, ma'am," I told her--in our own way of speaking. But I didn't know what else to say.

"I was riding over to see you--on business," she went on. "For my uncle--Grover Nealman, of Kastle Krags. I'm his secretary."

The words made me stop and think. It was hard for me to explain, even to myself, just why they thrilled me far under the skin, and why the little tingle of delight I had known at first gave way to a mighty surge of anticipation and pleasure. It seems to be true that the first thing we look for in a stranger is his similarity to us, and the second, his dissimilarity; and in these two factors alone rests our attitude towards him. It has been thus since the beginning of the world--if he is too dissimilar, our reaction is one of dislike, and I suppose, far enough down the scale of civilization, we would immediately try to kill him. If he has enough in common with ourselves we at once feel warm and friendly, and invite him to our tribal feasts.

Perhaps this was the way it was between myself and Edith Nealman. She wasn't infinitely set apart from me--some one rich and experienced and free of all the problems that made up my life. Nealman's niece meant something far different than Nealman's daughter--if indeed the man had a daughter. She was his secretary, she said--a paid worker even as I was. She had come to see me on business--and no wonder I was anticipatory and elated as I hadn't been for years!

"I'm glad to know you, Miss----" I began. For of course I didn't know her name, then.

"Miss Nealman," she told me, easily. "Now I'll tell you what my uncle wants. He heard about you, from Mr. Todd."

I nodded. Mr. Todd had brought me out from the village and had helped me with some work I was doing for my university, in a northern state.

"He was trying to get Mr. Todd to help him, but he was busy and couldn't do it," the girl went on. "But he said to get Ned Killdare--that you could do it as well as he could. He said no one knew the country immediately about here any better than you--that though you'd only been here a month or two you had been all over it, and that you knew the habits of the turkeys and quail, and the best fishing grounds, better than any one else in the country."

I nodded in assent. Of course I knew these things: on a zoological excursion for the university they were simply my business. But as yet I couldn't guess how this information was to be of use to Grover Nealman.

"Now this is what my uncle wants," the girl went on. "He's going to have a big shoot and fish for some of his man friends--they are coming down in about two weeks. They'll want to fish in the Ochakee River and in the lagoon, and hunt quail and turkey, and my uncle wants to know if--if he can possibly--hire you as guide."