Few human motives are simple. The travesty of restitution served to cloak even to himself jealousy and grudging and revenge, and that mad impulse to hurl down and wreak woe upon those who had chanced to prosper in the dispensations which he had ordered himself, and which had wrought perversely to his injury. He had, however, nothing of the appearance or the manner of a subtle villain when he was on horseback in the slanting lines of rain, that multiplied till they hid the mountains near at hand, and erased the Cove, and nullified all the conditions of the familiar world. On the contrary, his bluff, bold, open aspect was of a reassuring geniality, notwithstanding its overbearing intimations, and served to identify him to Kenniston, as he lounged in his unsubstantial domicile, and looked out ruefully at the dull day with the gray rain and the grayer mist and the ochreous pools of water, seeing naught else till this massive equestrian figure materialized in its vaporous midst and seemed to ride straight out of it. Taft flung himself from his saddle with a decision which implied a mission; and despite Kenniston's intention to discourage the visits of the mountaineers, he could not, with so assured a guest, have withheld the customary greeting of hospitality without more definite rudeness than he had expected to adventure. The new-comer was the more welcome since Kenniston's companion in keeping the monkey stove warm was Rodolphus Ross, who had come to the Cove for the purpose of examining the scene of the fire, and ferreting out the incendiary. He had, under the guise of questioning Kenniston on the subject, inflicted his society upon his restive host for the better part of an hour, now and then desisting from the discussion to work away at the damper of the monkey stove, which he patronizingly denominated a "smart little trick," albeit by reason of the heavy air and ill adjustment and the lack of adequate draught it was doing itself no credit. Ross experimented with an ardor and uninformed energy which threatened the total wreck of its constitution. The clatter of the metal was hardly more grating upon Kenniston's educated nerves than were his guest's speech and bearing. There was something in the exaggeration of the deputy's urban boorishness, the plaid of his ill-fitting garments, the hilarity of his vulgar townish impudence, that daunted a charitable acceptation of his foibles. So distasteful to Kenniston's cultured taste was the degree of sophistication acquired by the deputy sheriff, and with many a misconception adapted to his personality, that the absence of it seemed dignity in the mountaineer, and Taft's unvarnished address the unpolished substratum of good manners.