The young Thornton met those eyes so full of eagle boldness yet so tempered with kindness, and to his own expression came a responsive flash of that winning boyishness which these men had not seen on his face before.
"Mr. Rowlett," he made answer in a low and reverent voice, "I hain't got no remembrance of my pappy, but I'd love ter think he favoured ye right smart."
Slowly the low-pitched voice of the Nestor began to dominate the place, cloudy with its pipe-smoke and redolent with the stale fumes of fires long dead. Like some Hogarth picture against a sombre background the ungainly figures of men stood out of shadow and melted into it: men unkempt and tribal in their fierceness of aspect.
Old Jim made to blaze again before their eyes, with a rude and vigorous eloquence, all the ruthless bane of the toll-taking years before the truce. He stripped naked every specious claim of honour and courage with which its votaries sought to hallow the vicious system of the vendetta. He told in words of simple force how he and Caleb Harper had striven to set up and maintain a sounder substitute, and how for the permanence of that life-work they had prayed.
"Caleb an' me," he said at last, "we didn't never succeed without we put by what we asked others ter forego. Yore wife's father was kilt most foully—an' Caleb looked over hit. My own boy fell in like fashion, an' my blood wasn't no tamer then thet in other veins—but yit I held my hand. Ye comes ter us now, frettin' under ther sting of a wrong done ter ye—an' I don't say yore wrath hain't righteous, but ye've done been vouchsafed sich a chanst as God don't proffer ter many, an' God calls fer sacrifices from them elected ter sarve him."
He paused there for a moment and passed his knotted hand over the parchment-like skin of his gaunt temples, then he went on: "Isaac offered up Jacob—or leastways he stud ready ter do hit. Ye calls on us ter trust ye an' stand with ye, an' we calls on you in turn fer a pledge of faith. Fer God's sake, boy, be big enough ter bide yore time twell ther Harpers an' Doanes hev done come outen this distemper of passion. I tells ye ye kain't do no less an' hold yore self-esteem."
He paused, then came forward with his old hand extended and trembling in a palsy of eagerness, and despite the turmoil of a few minutes before, such a taut silence prevailed that the asthmatic rustiness of the old man's breath was an audible wheezing through the room.
The young messenger had only to lift his hand then and grasp that outheld one—and peace would have been established—yet his one free arm seemed to him more difficult to lift in a gesture of compliance than that which was bandaged down.
His own voice broke and he answered with difficulty: "Give me a leetle spell ter ponder—I kain't answer ye off-hand."
Thornton's eyes went over, and in the lighted doorway fell upon Bas Rowlett sitting with his features schooled to a masked and unctuous hypocrisy, but back of that disguise the wounded man fancied he could read the satisfaction of one whose plans march toward success. His own teeth clicked together and the sweat started on his temples. He had to look away—or forget every consideration other than his own sense of outrage and the oath he had sworn to avenge it.