“He’s a stiff-spined old grampus,” said the widow, promptly. “Him and me squabbles so’s the neighbors ’most come a-runnin’ in to part us. He’s powerful set on havin’ his own way—and mostly he gits it. He’s sharper ’n a new sickle. He’s been justice of the peace here since before Mary Whittaker was born, and Mary’s got a boy of ten herself. Hain’t never been nothin’ more ’n just justice of the peace, but he runs the whole blessed county out of his office. He’s one of them things the papers call a political boss; but if I do say it, Zaanan Frame does a good job of it. But he runs it so folks git the wuth of their taxes, and so that them that wants justice gits it. “About dependin’ on him,” she went on, after drawing a breath, “you won’t never find him dodgin’ about underhand. If he likes you, he hain’t apt to show it by runnin’ up and kissin’ you in public; and if he don’t like you, he don’t cuss you and try to hit you with a pebble whenever you meet—but you soon git to know. I’ve knowed him to give a man he didn’t like all the best of a deal—so nobody’d accuse him of workin’ a personal spite. I’ve knowed him to refuse things to a friend he’d ’a’ done for a stranger. They say he stretches the powers of his office and does things a justice hain’t got no right to do—and I calc’late he does. But it’s in time of need for somebody. He meddles into folkses’ fam’ly affairs, and plans to marry off this girl to that feller—which plans mostly works out to his notion. “He’s got a sort of notion he was put here by God Almighty to be father and mother to every man, woman, and child in the county. But there hain’t no complaints of him as a parent, though he’s a mean-dispositioned, meddlin’, sharp-tongued, stubborn-minded old coot. “Diversity hain’t given much to sayin’ anythin’ but meannesses about folks; we don’t speak none about Zaanan, but I calc’late there’s growed men that’ll walk behind him to the cemetery with tears a-runnin’ down their cheeks, and wimmin that’ll be sobbin’ and leetle children that’ll know what it means to lose their pa. If there’s any argument when Zaanan gits to stand before the great white throne, he’s got a right to say: ‘Wait a minnit, Lord, till we kin git in a number of souls that’s here but was bound for the other place till I got my hands on the reins.’ If you’re worryin’ as to where Zaanan Frame stands, I kin tell you—he stands where it’s honestest and lightest for him to stand. My goodness! but hain’t I been goin’ on about him! Thinkin’ as high of him as I do, it’s a wonder I don’t up and make him my third.” Jim sat gnawing his finger silently for many minutes after the widow was done speaking. She spoke as one who knew. Jim knew she would have testified in a court of law just as she had spoken to him. Nor would she have spoken so except from certainty. He was compelled, therefore, to revise his judgments and suspicions. “If you were in a hard place, Mrs. Stickney, and needed advice, would you go to Zaanan Frame?”