My curiosity so prevailed over my sense of duty that I turned from the road through the tall grass, temporarily abandoning my errand, and picked my way among some old wheels and scrap iron to join the men.
Their talk only aggravated my wonder.
Clearing his throat, the smith gruffly muttered, "It does act like him, and yet I can't believe it'll be him."
"Why shouldn't he come back?" one of the farmers asked in a louder voice. "Things done twenty years ago will never be dragged up to face him, and he'd know that."
The smith grunted. "Where would Neil Gleazen find the money to buy a suit of good clothes and a beaver hat?"
"That's easy answered," a third speaker put in. And they all exchanged significant glances.
In the silence that followed I made bold to put a question for myself. "Of whom are you talking?" I asked.
They looked closely at me and again exchanged glances.
"There's someone up yonder at the inn, Joe," the smith said kindly; "and Ben, here, getting sight of him last night and again this morning, has took a notion that it's a fellow who used to live here years ago and who left town—well, in a hurry. As to that, I can't be sure, but I vum, I'd not be surprised if it was Neil Gleazen after all."
I now discerned in one of the rocking-chairs on the porch the figure of a stranger, well dressed so far as we could see at that distance, who wore a big beaver hat set rakishly a trifle forward. He had thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and as he leaned back, with his feet raised against one of the columns that supported the porch-roof, he sent clouds of white cigar-smoke eddying up and away.