The man responded in somewhat surly wise, eyeing, gloweringly, the dashing apparition of the young horseman, springing up so suddenly in the midst of the woods, for Lloyd's appearance, thus well mounted, was doubly effective.
"Why—it jes' leads round an' round about 'n the mountings." He spoke as if constrained to elucidate a self-evident proposition. His large brown eyes, which had a special lustre of surface, not depth, seemed vaguely familiar, and somehow inimical, to Lloyd, who started as he heard Lucia speak, although her voice was too restrained to reach the mountaineer's ears.
"Look, look! it is an old acquaintance of ours," said Lucia, wheeling her horse to accost the laggards in the rear. "It's Diogenes. Don't you see the lantern in his hand? It's Diogenes! What distinguished people one does meet in the Great Smoky Mountains!"
The young mountaineer shifted his gaze to the approaching group for an instant only; then he fixed his intent eyes once more on Lloyd's face.
He was a fine type of his class, well built, tall, with a peculiarly trig, trim effect. He wore no coat, and his shirt of blue homespun showed how slim, yet muscular, was his body, and his long boots, drawn to the knee over his trousers of blue-jeans, encased legs of which every movement suggested activity. He had a large brown hat, the brim in front turned up, and showing a jagged, ill-cut fringe of hair that resembled an old fashion of ladies' coiffure, called a "bang." He was as surly, as ill-conditioned, as unattractive of aspect as a panther; his handsome traits appealed as little to one's liking.
Lucia's airy, debonair manner bespoke the blithest spirits. "Oh, joy! Diogenes is looking for you, Mr. Jardine. His quest is successful at last. You are the honest man! You know it must be you, for we are all aware how politic poor Frank is."
For the first time Mr. Jardine deigned to mention Lloyd. Heretofore he would not so much as glance at him. But he could not resist converting her pleasantry into a slur, and barbing the point. "And is not Mr. Lloyd a competitor for distinction as an honest man? Am I alone?"
Lloyd discerned the acrid taunt in the smooth tones and flashed a fierce glance into Mr. Jardine's bland and smiling countenance.
"Oh, my, no," exclaimed Lucia unexpectedly. "How can you ask? Didn't Mr. Lloyd fake up Wick-Zoo as a wild man—shall I ever cease to shiver when I think of his blood-curdling howls—when he is really as tame as—as—as you? And didn't Mr. Lloyd make out that he was nobody much, and nothing, when he is the grandson of Judge Clarence Jennico Lloyd, one of the most distinguished jurists of the day, and is a representative of one of the oldest and best families in the South. Oh, Diogenes wouldn't light his lantern to examine such a patent fraud as we have discovered Mr. Lloyd to be."
Jardine's thin cheek was flushed, but his tact enabled him to carry off the "slugging," as Lucia's retort featured itself in Lloyd's triumphant consciousness, as jauntily as a man well could.