She had taken his arm and was trying to lead him away, aware of the futility of argument or even reply.
“You can’t come around this family, Phin Look,” stormed the Judge, “by wheedling a girl who hasn’t had self-respect enough to spit on——”
“Judge Willard!” The voice of the Squire was so tense, so pregnant, that the old man stopped and looked at him. The lawyer was clutching a paling in each hand. He had projected his face over the fence. He was grayish white, and his eyes glowed under their knotted brows. “Don’t you discuss the honest and faithful friendship there is between your daughter and myself. Do you understand me?” The old man looked at him, “plipping” his lips as though searching for a reply.
“You have hogged the best out of her life. You have stood between her and some man’s honest affection. I want you to know that I hate every ounce of your stingy old skin and bones. I——” but he checked himself and turned to the daughter with an appealing smile breaking through the white rigidity of his countenance. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he murmured, with a wag of his head for each exclamation. “What a savage old whelp it is that’s barking over your fence, Sylvena. Forgive me again.”
He turned hastily and went up the street, following the caravan. Old Eli, who had been patiently waiting on the sidewalk’s edge, fell in at his master’s heels.
And before him was Hiram guiding the grotesque elephant between the great silver poplars before Squire Phin’s lonely home.
CHAPTER III—FROM THE MOUTH OF MARRINER AMAZEEN
“Narrer to the heel and wide to the toe,