Toying with fate; or, Nick Carter's narrow shave — Reading Companion

THE MYSTERIOUS OLD MAN.

“Move on, old man, and go home!”

It was the stern voice of one of New York’s finest policemen that uttered these words.

“Home! I wonder where it is?” muttered the old man to whom the policeman had spoken, and a shudder ran through his frame, as he slowly moved down the street.

As he reached the corner near old St. John’s Church, on Varick Street, he paused, rubbed his eyes and gazed dreamily around him.

For some time before the policeman had addressed him he had been standing inside the church, looking through the railings into the churchyard.

His form was bent by decrepitude and sorrow, and his hair was as white as the flaky snow that clung to the steeple of the old church, the bells of which had just sounded the knell of the dying year.

The old man only halted on the corner for a minute, and then, crossing Beach Street, he shuffled along until he reached the center of the block, where he came to a standstill in front of an old-fashioned house, which was unoccupied.

Then, as if a faintness had come over him, he grasped the rusty iron railing to prevent himself falling to the ground, and he closed his eyes, as though the sight of the snow-covered houses was too much for him.

The policeman had followed him at a distance, and was watching him from where he was standing on the corner.

“Poor devil!” muttered the guardian of the peace, as he swung his nightstick back and forth. “I wonder who he is! He seems weak! Perhaps at one time he amounted to something. God save me from ever coming to his condition. I wonder why he stands so long in front of that old empty house, which has been closed for twenty years, to my knowledge! I’ll watch him a while, but I won’t molest him, poor devil!”

As the policeman concluded his soliloquy the old man straightened up and walked up to the door of the house, the old knocker on which he caught hold of and gave it a rap.

But suddenly, as if struck by some painful recollection, his hand fell to his side and he staggered back to the middle of the sidewalk.

“Strange,” the policeman ejaculated, noting this action. “Perhaps he lived there at one time.”

The old man looked up at the house, at which he gazed long and intently.

Then, suddenly arousing himself, he ambled back to the corner, stopping near the policeman. He looked confusedly around him, from the left to the right, and the policeman gazed at him closely, but spoke not a word. On his part, he did not seem to see the man in uniform. He stood bewildered, appearing not to know which way to turn.

“Why don’t you go home, old man?” the policeman asked, this time in a softened tone of voice.

“Home!” the old fellow ejaculated--his voice was like a wail, a heartbroken sob. “Home! where is it?”

“The Lord bless you, man, how can I tell you, if you can’t tell yourself?”

“Twenty years ago--twenty years behind darkened walls--and this----” He muttered the words in such a forlorn tone that the policeman stared at him.

“Your brain is turned, old gentleman.”

The old man laughed and looked up into his questioner’s face with a quizzical expression.

“My brain is clear, my friend,” he replied, in a clear, harsh tone. “I have come from a prison--the world is strangely altered since I was in it before.”

“In it before? Why, what do you mean? I suppose you will try and persuade me that you have been dead and have risen from the grave.”

“Figuratively speaking, I have--I have been dead to the world--in prison at Sing Sing. Mark me well--Sing Sing Prison--for twenty years--to-day I was released. See me now. I am old, decrepit, hardly able to walk. Once I stood erect, my hair was as black as the raven’s wing, and now--look at me, a wreck without home or friends. Wife, children, all gone! I have never seen nor heard of them since the day I was taken out of yonder house a prisoner, by the unjust, hard, and cruel decree of a so-called court of justice. Twenty years! A prisoner, buried alive, as it were.”

“You had committed a crime?”

“No. I was innocent, but powerful conspirators plotted against me--the evidence was perjured--and I--I--was entombed.”

“You say you lived in yonder house twenty years ago?”