Squire Lauson was at this time ninety-three years of age. The fact appeared incredible, because he had preserved, almost unimpaired, not only his moral energy and intellectual faculties, but also his physical senses, and even to an extraordinary degree his muscular strength. His long and carelessly worn hair was not white, but merely gray; and his only baldness was a shining hand’s-breadth, prolonging the height of his forehead. His face was deeply wrinkled, but more apparently with thought and passion than from decay, for the flesh was still well under control of the muscles, and the expression was so vigorous that one was tempted to call it robust. There was nothing of that insipid and almost babyish tranquillity which is commonly observable in the countenances of the extremely aged. The cheekbones were heavy, though the healthy fulness of the cheeks prevented them from being pointed; the jaws, not yet attenuated by the loss of many teeth, were unusually prominent and muscular; the heavy Roman nose still stood high above the projecting chin. In general, it was a long, large face, grimly and ruggedly massive, of a uniform grayish color, and reminding you of a visage carved in granite. In figure the Squire was of medium height, with a deep chest and heavy limbs. He did not stand quite upright, but the stoop was in his shoulders and not in his loins, and arose from a slouching habit of carrying himself much more than from weakness. He walked with a cane, but his step, though rather short, was strong and rapid, and he could get over the ground at the rate of three miles an hour. At times he seemed a little deaf, but it was mainly from absorption of mind and inattention, and he could hear perfectly when he was interested. The great gray eyes under his bushy, pepper-and-salt eyebrows were still so sound that he only used spectacles in reading. As for voice, there was hardly such another in the neighborhood; it was a strong, rasping, dictatorial _caw_, like the utterance of a gigantic crow; it might have served the needs of a sea-captain in a tempest. A jocose neighbor related that he had in a dream descended into hell, and that in trying to find his way out he had lost his reckoning, until, hearing a tremendous volley of oaths on the surface of the earth over his head, he knew that he was under the hills of Barham, and that Squire Lauson was swearing at his oxen.