The two Falkinses rose and walked down to meet the unexpected visitor, uncertain what attitude to take in the face of such stupendous effrontery. The dark giant offered his hand, and said:
"I reckon you gentlemen are a little surprised to see me, and I guess when you know why I came you'll be still more surprised."
CHAPTER X
Gravely restraining their protests until the visitor should have spoken, yet heavy-hearted with premonition, the elder and younger Falkins led the way up the flagstone path to the porch. Had the head of the house of Montagu strolled casually in, his hands still red with murder, for an afternoon call at the strong-hold of the Capulets, his advent could hardly have been more unexpected or unwelcome. The Honorable McAllister Falkins and his son were mountaineers, and to the mountaineer the voluntary arrival of a guest under the roof-tree is a mandate to consideration so long as he remains there.
The Deacon disposed himself in a heavy split-bottomed rocker, and for a time a survey of the landscape seemed to absorb him.
The house sat in its yard overlooking the twisting road and the steep banks of the middle fork of Kentucky River. For that unlettered land it was a mansion, with its two-story height and painted weather-boarding. Its glazed, green-shuttered windows gave it a certain dignity. Instead of puncheon floors, there were carpets and such furniture as one might have seen in the outer world, mingled strangely with old-fashioned reminders of pioneer life. At one end of the porch leaned a discarded spinning wheel, and an arm's length away stood the phonograph with which the two Falkins men had been soothing their anxieties with the strains of "Il Trovatore."
Off to the side of the house stretched an orchard in whose shadowed rim of lingering locust bloom ranged a trim line of ancient "bee gums." It was a simple and rambling farmhouse, but in a country of squalid habitations it partook of a certain grandeur, and one must needs go far to find a more ruggedly magnificent outlook, over park-like stretches of patriarchal timber, palisading river-banks and towering mountains, than that commanded from its verandah.
For a few moments the Deacon sat in his rocker with as little seeming realization of his unwelcomeness as though he were an old friend and constant visitor. He sat upright, his hat lying on the floor at his side and his hands resting on his large-boned knees. Both the men of the Falkins house acknowledged anew how unusual and commanding was that face, and how difficult it was to recognize upon it any hall-mark of crime or villainy. The dark eyes were steadfastly gentle, and even under the long drooping mustache the lips held a sort of dreamer's curve. Finally, the visitor spoke.
"The more I study about it, the more I'm afraid that Saturday can't hardly pass by without trouble."