Now he sat mumbling away into his long beard, and in the door stood his son-in-law, a sturdy man, himself well past middle-age, with a face that was an index of hardihood, shrewdness, and the gift for knowing when and how to hold his tongue.
On the steps of the porch, smiling like a good-humoured leviathan and listening to the talk, sat "Peanuts" Causey, but he was not to be allowed to sit long silent, because of all those gathered there he alone had met and talked with the stranger.
"I fared past his dwellin' house day before yistiddy," declared Causey in response to a question, "an' I 'lowed he war a right genial-spoken sort of body."
The chorus of fresh interrogations was interrupted by a man who had not spoken before. He rose from his seat and stepped across toward Peanuts, and he was not prepossessing of appearance as he came to his feet.
Joe Doane, whom the pitiless directness of a rude environment had rechristened "Hump" Doane, stood less than five feet to the crown of his battered hat, and the hat sat on an enormous head out of which looked the seamed and distorted face of a hunchback. But his shoulders were so broad and his arms so long and huge that the man had the seeming of gorilla hideousness and gorilla power.
The face, too, despite its soured scowl, held the alert of a keen mentality and was dominated by eyes whose sleeping fires men did not lightly seek to fan into blazes of wrath.
No man of either faction stood with a more uncompromising sincerity for law and peace—but Hump Doane viewed life through the eyes of one who has suffered the afflictions and mortification of a cripple in a land that accepts life in physical aspects. His wisdom was darkened with the tinge and colour of the cynic's thought. He trusted that man only who proved his faith by his works, and believed all evil until it was disproven. Like a nervous shepherd who tends wild sheep he feared always for his flock and distrusted every pelt that might disguise and mask a possible wolf of trouble.
"What did ye say this hyar stranger calls hisself, Peanuts?" he demanded, bluntly, and when the other had told him he repeated the name thoughtfully. Then he shot out another question with the sharp peremptoriness of a prosecuting attorney, and in the high, rasping voice of his affliction.
"What caused him ter leave Virginny?"
The stout giant grinned imperturbably.