CHAPTER 5I should have known better than to suppose that Eliphalet Greer would have let me pass safely out his door that night. I should have known I was drifting then, turning slowly in strange and hostile currents. I should have known as soon as I stepped outside his door, for it was a night when anything might happen, a night that changes the most staid New England street into a lane of fantasy. You may remember the heavy Ionic pillars by my father’s house, and the tall lilacs beside them which sheltered the portico. I did not realize the full force of the wind until I had passed those pillars. It was a northeast gale, such as sometimes comes from our leaden sky to lay our coast to waste. Old Deacon Jesup used to say those winds have the wrath of the armies of the Lord. Once you are uns
