“Dr. Ave, Joe Ennery, Coot Hogg, and Ramal Bardun, John Rammel, and Robert Blending has gone; and Captain Black, and Williams, and I expect the Payne boys.”
“Do you know that, Penny?” and Uncle Jesse bit his lips.
“Yes, I met them near sundown, gallopping hard that way; or rather, I didn’t meet the Payne boys.”
“Hist! There comes the old man.”
“Good evening Mr. Payne,” said the host, extending his right hand in a cordial welcome, while with his left he made a sign behind his back, commanding caution.
This was clearly visible, though the sun’s light had entirely faded; for the cabin door, near the outside of which they stood, was wide open, and a fire of fat pine was filling the broad chimney’s throat with a sheet of flame.
“Old man Payne” was a small man, with a large head, quick, deep-set gray eyes, under a broad brow which was crowned with snowy hair.
He it was who had counselled discretion, moderation and honorable dealing at the Club meeting at which Watson Atwood was initiated into the mysteries of modern southern politics.
A descendant of an honored southern family, he yet seemed from infancy to have inherited many notions which were antagonistic to the environments of his childhood, and which several seasons spent in New England, in the early home of his mother, served to strengthen and intensify.
His wife, always fully Southern in ideas and sympathies, had reared their children so, aided by their surroundings, while he had very quietly cherished his own sentiments.