“Why, thank you, thank you,” the stranger said. “I mustn't think of troubling you. I dare say I can get something to eat at your tavern. I've often been over night in worse places, no doubt. I've been traveling through your State, and I've turned a little out of my way to stop at Leatherwood, because I've been interested in a peculiar incident of your local history.”
The two men perceived from something in each other's parlance, though one spoke with the neat accent of the countries beyond the Alleghanies, and the other with the soft slurring Ohio River utterance, that they were in the presence of men different by thinking if not by learning from most men in the belated region of a new country.
“Oh, yes,” the old man said with instant intelligence, “the Leatherwood God.”
“Yes,” the other eagerly assented. “I was told, at your county seat, that I could learn all about it if I asked for Squire Braile, here.”
“I am Matthew Braile,” the old man said with dignity, and the stranger returned with a certain apology in his laugh:
“I must confess that I suspected as much, and I'm ashamed not to have frankly asked at once.”
“Better 'light,”—the Squire condoned whatever offense there might have been in the uncandor. “I don't often get the chance to talk of our famous imposture, and I can't let one slip through my fingers. You must come in to supper, and if you smoke I can give you a pipe of our yellow tobacco, afterwards, and we can talk—”
“But I should tire you with my questions. In the morning—”
“We old men sometimes have a trick of not living till morning. You'd better take me while you can get me.”
“Well, if you put it in that way,” the stranger said, and he slipped down from his saddle.