"You heard me, I think," returned Jim calmly.
Hammond looked at him with an expression in his dark, close-set eyes that was at once angry and calculating.
"It ain't neither civil nor wise to talk to me like that," he said.
"If you expect civility from me you must practice it," replied Jim, deliberately meeting and returning the stare.
Hammond's eyes were small, black, and set close together. One contained a suggestion of a squint. Jim's eyes were of normal size and varying hues and shades and set wide. They were gray now. Their look was peculiarly direct. Hammond's were the first to waver and slip aside.
The narrow road dipped and rose. The woods sloped down to it on the left, and on the right the wooded bank dipped steeply to the river. The big grays trotted wherever the road was level.
For twenty minutes after the battle of eyes, Amos Hammond drove in silence, looking straight ahead, and James Todhunter sat in silence beside him and studied the landscape with interest and appreciation. At last Hammond began to hum a lugubrious tune. From that he passed to a livelier one. He ceased humming suddenly and took to whistling. He dropped that as suddenly and sighed profoundly.
"After all's said an' done, a man is only young once," he said.
Jim brightened and smiled.
"What about second childhood?" he returned.