"I been comin' since last Friday," he explained. "I been comin' daown river for three days naow—and I been comin' fast!"
Again that measuring, level glance.
"An' I ain't got no business—yit," he went on. "Thet's what I aim to locate, after I've hed a chance to look around a trifle. But I am tired a little, an' so if you mean thet you're askin' me to stop for a minit—if you mean thet you're askin' me that—why, then … then, I guess I don't mind if I do!"
"That's what I mean," said Caleb.
And the little figure preceded him across his soft, cropped lawn.
CHAPTER II
THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN
Caleb Hunter had never married, and even now, at the age of forty and odd, in particularly mellow moments he was liable to confess that, while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned, he felt that his bachelor condition had points of excellence too obvious to be treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, four years his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery of the white place on the hill that their churnings had never been evidenced may have been in part an answer to his contentment.
For Sarah Hunter, too, had never married. To the townspeople who had never dared to try to storm the wall of her apparent frigidity, or been able quite to understand her aloof austerity, she was little more than a weekly occurence as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun itself. Every Sunday morning a rare vision of stately dignity for all her tininess, assisted by Caleb, she descended from the Hunter equipage to enter the portals of the Morrison Baptist church. After the service she reappeared and, having complimented the minister upon the sagacity of his discourse, again assisted by Caleb, she mounted to the rear seat of the surrey and rolled back up the hill.