There was no response to this conciliating commonplace, nor to the invitation to sit down. Mrs. Gooch, having divested herself of coat, scarf, bonnet and overshoes, was straightening her hair before the looking-glass, while her husband surveyed the room and its contents with the disdainful air of one used to much better things. You could tell by the expression on his face that the floor of his parlor was covered by a gorgeous Brussels instead of the many-hued rag carpet that served Oliver Baxter and his wife; and where they had old-fashioned horse-hair chairs and a sofa, he possessed articles so handsomely done in plush that it was almost a sin to occupy them. If he had not come directly from contact with a biting wind, one might have been justified in construing his frequent and audible sniffs as of scorn rather than of necessity. He was a tall, lank man with narrow shoulders, narrow face, and a pair of extremely narrow black eyes. He typified prosperity of the meaner kind. Over in Hopkinsville, Horace Gooch was considered the richest and the stingiest man in town. He was what is commonly called a “tax shark,” deriving a lucrative and obnoxious income through his practice of buying up real estate at tax-sales and holding it until it was redeemed by the hard-pressed owner, or, as it happened in many instances, acquiring the property under a provision of the state law then in operation, whereby after a prescribed lapse of time he was enabled to secure a tax deed in his own name. He also trafficked in chattel mortgages. No one, not even his fellow church members, had ever been known to get the better of him. It must be said for him, however, he went to church twice every Sunday and invariably did his share toward spreading the gospel by dropping a noisy quarter into the collection plate at both services. And so astute a business man was he that he never was without the proper change. His brother-in-law called him a “blood-sucking skinflint,” and it is not in the power of the teller of this tale to improve upon that except by quoting from the unprintable opinions of his victims.