“And so I am!” he cried, with a sudden change of tone. “If life is measured by what we feel and what we suffer, I am old,”--he paused with a sense of self-betrayal,--“some four or five hundred at least,” he added, relapsing into his wonted light tone. She shook her head sagely. “’Pears like ter me ez it mought be medjured by the sense folks gather ez they go. I hev knowed some mighty young fools at sixty.” The color showed in his face; her unconscious intimation of his youth according to this method of estimate touched his vanity, even evoked a slight resentment. “You are an ancient dame, on that theory! I bow to your wisdom, madam,--quite the soberest party I have seen since I entered the paradisaical seclusion of Etowah Cove.” She appreciated the belligerent note in his voice, although she scarcely apprehended the _casus belli_. There was, however, a responsive flash in her eye, which showed she was game in any quarrel. No tender solicitude animated her lest unintentionally she had wounded the feelings of this pilgrim and stranger. He had taken the liberty to be offended when no offense was intended, and perhaps with the laudable desire to give him, as it were, something to cry for, she struck back as best she might. “Not so sober ez some o’ them folks ye gin yer show afore, over yander at the Notch. I hearn they war fit ter weep an’ pray arterward. Mam ’lowed ye made ’em sober fur sure.” He was genuinely nettled at this thrust. His feats of jugglery had resulted so contrary to his expectations, had roused so serious a danger, that he did not even in his own thoughts willingly revert to them. He turned away on one heel of the pointed russet shoes that had impressed the denizens of Etowah Cove hardly less unpleasantly than a cloven hoof, and looked casually down the long darkly lustrous vista of the river; for the mill so projected over the water that the point of view was as if it were anchored in midstream. The green boughs leaned far over the smooth shadowy current; here and there, where a half-submerged rock lifted its jagged summit above the surface, the water foamed preternaturally white in the sylvan glooms. He had a cursory impression of many features calculated to give pleasure to the eye, were his mind at ease to enjoy such trifles, and his sense alert to mark them: the moss on the logs, and the lichen; the tangle of the trumpet-vines, all the budding tendrils blowing with the breeze, that clambered over the rickety structure, and hung down from the apex of the high roof, and swayed above the portal; even the swift motion of a black snake swimming sinuously in the clear water, and visible through the braiding of the currents as through corrugated glass. “No,” he said, his teeth set together, his eyes still far down the stream, “I did my little best, but my entertainment was not a success; and if that fact makes you merry, I wish you joy of your mirth.”