The anger and the drink and perhaps the consciousness of being in the wrong were all ablaze in the Major's eyes.
The two were alone; only the darkling shadows stood at tiptoe at the open windows, and still the flushed sky sent down a pervasive glow from above.
Hoxer swallowed hard, gulping down his own wrath and sense of injury. “Major,” he said blandly, trying a new deal, “I don't think you quite understand me.”
“Such a complicated proposition you are, to be sure!”
Hoxer disregarded the sarcasm, the contempt in the tone.
“I am not trying to rip up an old score, but you said at Winfield's store—at the store—that I did not build the cross levee on the surveyor's line; that I shortened it——”
“So you did.”
“But as if I had shortened the levee for my own profit, when, as you know, it was paid for by the pole——”
“You tax me with making a false impression?”
An extreme revulsion of expectation harassed Hoxer. He had always known that Jeffrey was an exception to the general rule of the few large land-owners in the community, who were wont to conserve and, in fact, to deserve the pose of kindly patron as well as wealthy magnate. But even Jeffrey, he thought, would not grudge a word to set a matter straight that could cost him nothing and would mean much to the levee-contractor. Though of large experience in levee-building, Hoxer was new to the position of contractor, having been graduated into it, so to speak, from the station of foreman of a construction-gang of Irishmen. He had hoped for further employ in this neighborhood, in building private levees that, in addition to the main levees along the banks of the Mississippi, would aid riparian protection by turning off overflow from surcharged bayous and encroaching lakes in the interior. But, unluckily, the employer of the first enterprise he had essayed on his own responsibility had declared that he had deviated from the line of survey, usually essential to the validity of the construction, thereby much shortening the work; and had made this statement at Winfield's store—at the store!