sometimes in this office; but his fellow-townsmen saw him more often
in the street doorway, with the stairs behind him, and the flaring
show-cases of the photographer on either side, standing with his hands
in his pockets and an unlighted cigar in his mouth, looking at nothing
in particular. About every other day he went off after breakfast into
the country roundabout, sometimes with a rod, sometimes with a gun, but
always alone. He was a bachelor, and slept in a room at the back of
his office, cooking some of his meals himself, getting others at a
restaurant close by. Though he had little visible practice, he was
understood to be well-to-do and even more, and people tacitly inferred
that he "shaved notes." The Methodists of Octavius looked upon him as
a queer fish, and through nearly a dozen years had never quite outgrown
their hebdomadal tendency to surprise at seeing him enter their church.
He had never, it is true, professed religion, but they had elected him
as a trustee now for a number of terms, all the same--partly because he
was their only lawyer, partly because he, like both his colleagues, held
a mortgage on the church edifice and lot. In person, Mr. Gorringe was a
slender man, with a skin of a clear, uniform citron tint, black waving
hair, and dark gray eyes, and a thin, high-featured face. He wore
a mustache and pointed chin-tuft; and, though he was of New England
parentage and had never been further south than Ocean Grove, he
presented a general effect of old Mississippian traditions and tastes
startlingly at variance with the standards of Dearborn County Methodism.
Nothing could convince some of the elder sisters that he was not a
drinking man.

The three visitors had completed their survey of the room now; and Loren
Pierce emitted a dry, harsh little cough, as a signal that business
was about to begin. At this sound, Winch drew up his feet, and Gorringe
untied a parcel of account-books and papers that he held on his knee.