He stood the kicking as quietly as if it were part of the programme in the last act of a melodrama in which he was the villain. He was kicked entirely across the room and his head was driven violently into the half-open door of the side-board. Here it came in contact with one of Cook-mother's freshly baked hams, set aside for the morrow's lunch. Without even a change of countenance--for, in truth, it could not change--without the lifting even of a hair in surprise, the brute seized the ham and settled right where he was, to lunch. And he did it as complacently as he had walked in, and with a satisfied growl which seemed to say that, so far as the villain was concerned, the last act of the melodrama was ending to his entire satisfaction. Opening a side door, Travis seized him by the stump of a tail and one hind leg--knowing his mouth was too full of ham to bite anything--and threw him, still clutching the ham, bodily into the back yard. Without changing the attitude he found himself in when he hit the ground, the brindled dog went on with his luncheon. The very cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and said to the man who had followed the dog in: "Carpenter, if I had the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd soon own the world." The man had already taken his seat by the fire as unaffectedly as had the dog. He had entered as boldly and as indifferently and his two deep-set, cat-gray cross-eyes looked around as savagely. He was a tall, lank fellow, past middle age, with a crop of stiff, red-brown hair, beginning midway of his forehead, so near to an equally shaggy and heavy splotch of eyebrows as to leave scarce a finger's breadth between them. He was wiry and shrewd-looking, and his two deep-set eyes seemed always like a leopard's,--walking the cage of his face, hunting for some crack to slip through. Furtive, sly, darting, rolling hither and thither, never still, comprehensive, all-seeing, malicious and deadly shrewd. These were the eyes of Jud Carpenter, and they told it all. To this, add again that they looked in contrary directions. As a man's eye, so is the tenor of his life. Yet in them, now and then, the twinkle of humor shone. He had a conciliatory way with those beneath him, and he considered all the mill hands in that class. To his superiors he was a frowning, yet daring and even presumptuous underling. Somewhat better dressed than the Hillites from whom he sprang was this Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills--somewhat better dressed, and with the air of one who had arisen above his surroundings. Yet, withal, the common, low-born, malicious instinct was there--the instinct which makes one of them hate the man who is better educated, better dressed than he. All told, it might be summed up and said of Jud Carpenter that he had all the instincts of a Hillite and all the arrogance of a manager.