"I'll stand for him ef he does," said Mr. Davy Tanner, firmly. "I don't know any more th'n you about him, but I'm willin' to trust him."
"That's the way you treat most o' the folks that come about you," said his neighbor, smiling.
"Well, I ain't lost anything by it. It puts a man on his mettle to trust him—gives him self-respect, if there's any good in him."
All the year 'Zeki'l filled a hireling's place, working faithfully; but the next year he bought a steer, a few sticks of furniture, and, renting the cabin and rocky hillside from Mr. Davy Tanner, set up housekeeping, a yellow cur and an old violin his companions. Then he managed to buy the place, and settled down. On one side he had the Biggers place, a fine, rich farm, and on the other Mr. Davy Tanner's store and Zion Hill church. He attended the church regularly, but always sat quietly, unobtrusively in a corner, an alien, a man forever set apart from other men.
As the years passed, openly expressed distrust and prejudice died out, though he was never admitted to the inner life of the settlement. He did not seem to expect it, going his way quietly, and ever maintaining an impenetrable reserve about his own private history. Not even Mr. Davy Tanner could win him from that reticence, much as he desired to learn all about those long years of penal servitude and the life concealed behind them. He seemed to be without any ties of kindred or friendship, for the mail never brought anything to him, not even a newspaper.
"A DUSTY, PENNILESS TRAMP."
But he seemed a kindly natured man, with a vein of irrepressible sociability running through him, in spite of his solitary ways of life. There were glimpses of humor occasionally, and had it not been for that cloud of shame hanging forbiddingly over him, he would have become a favorite with his neighbors.
Across the road, opposite his house, he set up a small blacksmith shop, and much of his idle time he spent in there, mending broken tools, sharpening dull plows, hammering patiently on the ringing red-hot iron. The smallest, simplest piece of work received the most careful attention, and the farmers recognized and appreciated his conscientiousness.
One summer afternoon, as he was plowing in his cotton-field, a neighbor came along the road and, stopping at the fence, hailed him. He plowed to the end of the row, and halted.