It had been
restored to the locality in a clumsy effort to prove the child's death.
The officer was a big, burly man, handsome in his way, his ponderosity
suggesting a formidable development of muscle rather than fat. His manner
was as weighty as his appearance. He seemed as if he might have been
manufactured in a tobacco factory, so was the whole man permeated by
nicotian odors of various sorts, but he politely declined to smoke during
the long and wearing consultation, even with the permission of the ladies
present, and stowed away in his breast pocket the cigars that Bayne
pressed upon him, as he remarked, for reference at a moment of greater
leisure. Bolt upright, a heavy hand on either big-boned knee, his shaven
jowl drooping in fleshy folds over his high stiff collar, he sat gazing
into the fire with round, small, gray, bullet-like eyes, while the top of
his bald head grew pink and shining with warmth. He had a loud,
countrified voice in his normal speech, that gave an intimation of a
habit of hallooing to hounds in a fox-chase, or calling the cattle on a
thousand hills, but it had sunk to a mysterious undertone when he next
spoke, expressive of the importance of the disclosure he was about to
make.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156