As the years passed, openly expressed distrust and prejudice died out, though he was never admitted to the inner life of the settlement. He did not seem to expect it, going his way quietly, and ever maintaining an impenetrable reserve about his own private history. Not even Mr. Davy Tanner could win him from that reticence, much as he desired to learn all about those long years of penal servitude and the life concealed behind them. He seemed to be without any ties of kindred or friendship, for the mail never brought anything to him, not even a newspaper. [Illustration: "A DUSTY, PENNILESS TRAMP."] But he seemed a kindly natured man, with a vein of irrepressible sociability running through him, in spite of his solitary ways of life. There were glimpses of humor occasionally, and had it not been for that cloud of shame hanging forbiddingly over him, he would have become a favorite with his neighbors. Across the road, opposite his house, he set up a small blacksmith shop, and much of his idle time he spent in there, mending broken tools, sharpening dull plows, hammering patiently on the ringing red-hot iron. The smallest, simplest piece of work received the most careful attention, and the farmers recognized and appreciated his conscientiousness. One summer afternoon, as he was plowing in his cotton-field, a neighbor came along the road and, stopping at the fence, hailed him. He plowed to the end of the row, and halted. "Good evenin’, ’Zeki’l," said the man, mounting to the top of the fence, and sitting with his heels thrust through a crack in the lower rails. "Howdy you do, Marshall? What’s the news down your way?" ’Zeki’l inquired, drawing his shirt-sleeve across his face, and leaning on the plow-handles. "I don’t know as there’s much to tell. Billy Hutchins an’ Sary Ann McNally run away an’ got married last night, an’ old Mis’ Gillis is mighty nigh dead with the ja’nders. A punkin couldn’t look yallerer." He opened his knife, and ran his fingers along the rail in search of a splinter to whittle. "Old man Biggers has sold his place at last." "Has he?" "Yes; I met him down at the store, an’ he said the trade had been made." "He’s bound to go to Texas." "Yes; so he ’lows." "Well, old Georgy is good enough for me," ’Zeki’l remarked, with a pleased glance at his sterile fields.