"How's ducks in the hills?" Ross greeted him, dropping the small poker, and looking up with bright dark eyes, the two prominent front teeth visible beneath the short upper lip. There was a moment of rabbit-like expectancy of expression; then his lips widened to a laugh as the burly stranger turned his serious, impressive face toward him. "Air you-uns speakin' ter me, sir?" demanded Taft, in a grave, direct manner, his steady eye full upon him. The airy deputy shifted ground for once. "Good day fur ducks," he modified his speech. "Cornsider'ble fallin' weather," admitted Taft incidentally, and, seating himself in the chair indicated by Kenniston, he proceeded to take part in the conversation, his big booming voice rendering interruption impossible save as he listed. "I hev viewed you-uns afore at old Cap'n Lucy Tems's house," he said to Kenniston, crossing his legs, and eying the steam casually as it rose from the damp boots under the persuasive heat of the stove. "Yes, sir, Taft is my name." "I remember you very well," said Kenniston affably. "Won't you light your pipe?" He pushed a match holder and tobacco pouch across the table to him. Taft, without comment, filled his pipe from an inexhaustible supply of tobacco that seemed always loose in his pocket; it was far stronger than that of his host, as the rank odor which rose on the air presently demonstrated. Rodolphus Ross had looked at him with a grin of hopeful anticipation, which shrunk at once when he recognized and adapted to his own needs the uses of the lucifer match. "Yes, sir," Taft resumed, "I war toler'ble sorry ter hear 'bout'n yer hotel bein' burnt. I didn't view it at the time." He puffed the coals into a glow, and pulled away comfortably. "Meanes' people on yearth, these hyar mountaineers!" cried Ross. "They jes' so durned ignorant they don't know sin from salvation, nor law from lying." "Then they ain't 'sponsible," remarked Taft coolly. He pressed down the burning tobacco in the bowl with a callous forefinger indurated by long practice to crowding his pipe, and resumed: "I 'lowed it mought gin ye a start ef I war ter tell ye I hearn sev'ral men talkin' 'bout burnin' it,--long time ago, 'fore it war begun." Kenniston was leaning back in his chair, much at his ease, noting with a sort of languid interest the intimations of force and ferocity in his visitor's face: the keen sagacity, rather as of the instinctive endowment of one of the lower orders of creation than an enlightened intelligence; the beaklike nose; the contradictory geniality of the full blue eye and broad floridity. He brought his tilted chair suddenly to the floor, leaned forward on the table, with a slight exclusive gesture toward Rodolphus Ross, which, although it escaped that worthy, caused Taft a sharp regret for his precipitancy. The deputy sheriff was all a-clamor.