Dr. Cary told of his conversation with Still a few days before; but the little Sergeant was not convinced.
“Whenever he talks, that’s the time you know he ain’t goin’ to do it,” he said.
Still’s attentions to Miss Delia Dove had not only quickened Andy’s jealousy, but had sharpened his suspicion generally, and he had followed his movements closely.
Still had quickly become assured that the two young soldiers in command at the county seat were not the kind for him to impress. And when the new officer came he had at once proceeded to inspect him.
Leech was expecting him; for though they had never met, Still had already secretly placed himself in communication with Krafton, the Provost-Marshal in the city.
The new Provost was not pleasing to look on. He was a man spare in figure and with a slight stoop in his shoulders—consequent perhaps on a habit he had of keeping his gaze on the ground. He had mild blue eyes, and a long, sallow face, with a thin nose, bad teeth, and a chin that ended almost in a point. He rarely showed temper. He posed rather as a good-natured, easy-going fellow, cracking jokes with anyone who would listen to him, and indulging in laughter which made up in loudness what it lacked in merriment. When he walked, it was with a peculiar, sinuous motion. The lines in his face gave him so sour an expression that Steve Allen, just after he moved to the court-house to practise law, said that Leech, from his look, must be as great a stench in his own nostrils as in those of other people. This speech brought Steve Leech’s undying hatred, though he veiled it well enough at the moment and simply bided his time.
The Provost-Marshal was not a prepossessing person even to Still; but Mrs. Gray’s manager had large schemes in his mind, and the new-comer appeared a likely person to aid him in carrying them out. They soon became advisers for each other.
“You can’t do nothin’ with them two young men,” the overseer told the Provost. “I’ve done gauged ’em. I know ’em as soon as I see ’em, and I tell you they don’t think no more of folks like you and me than of the dirt under their feet. They’re for the aristocrats.”
He shortly gauged the Provost.
“When I know what a man wants, I know how to git at him,” he said to his son Wash, afterward. “He wants to get up—but first he wants money—and we must let him see it. I lent him a leetle too—just to grease the skillet. When you’ve lent a man money you’ve got a halter on him.”