The Scarlet Plague : Original Text

THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad.

But notrain had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side swelled up the slopes of theembankment and crested across it in a green wave of trees and bushes.

The trail was asnarrow as a man's body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway.

Occasionally, a pieceof rusty iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and the ties stillremained.

In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at a connection, had lifted the endof a rail clearly into view.

The tie had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike longenough for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the crumbling,rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant.

Old as the road was, it was manifest that ithad been of the mono-rail type.An old man and a boy travelled along this runway.

They moved slowly, for the old manwas very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous, and he leaned heavily uponhis staff.

A rude skull-cap of goat-skin protected his head from the sun.

From beneath thisfell a scant fringe of stained and dirty-white hair.

A visor, ingeniously made from a largeleaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way of his feet on the trail.

Hisbeard, which should have been snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear andcamp-stain as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass.

About his chest andshoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin.

His arms and legs, withered andskinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn and scars and scratchesbetoken long years of exposure to the elements.