CHAPTER VIII
IT WAS not the only adventure that the School-teacher was destined to meet with on this day. As he was returning along the mountain road, with the little boy on his shoulder, at the first ascent, beyond the river crossing, he met two men in a buckboard. The horses were gaunt as from hard usage. The man who drove them was known to the School-teacher. The other was a big man with a heavy black beard. He sat leaning over in the buckboard. His head down. His shoulders rising in a hump. He had gone stooped for so long that the hump on his shoulders was now a sort of permanent deformity.
They drew up by the roadside as the School-teacher approached. The big, hump-shouldered man spoke, without taking the trouble to preface his remarks with any form of salutation.
“Do you claim old Nicholas Parks' estate?”
The School-teacher regarded him with his deep, tranquil, gray-blue eyes.
“It belongs to my father,” he said.
“Is your father related to old Nicholas?”
“No.”
“Has he got a deed from old Nicholas?”
“No.”