sturdily built. A broad forehead, and clear, grey-blue eyes that met
everything fairly, testified in his favour. The nose, however, was
fleshy and snub. The mouth was not to be seen, nor its shape guessed at,
so thickly did the brown moustache and beard grow; but the short beard
seemed rather to exaggerate than conceal an extravagant outjutting of
the lower jaw, that gave a peculiar expression of energy and
determination to the face. His manner was unobtrusively quiet and
deliberate.

It was an unusual occurrence for Johnson to come at night to the bar-
lounge, which was beginning to fall into disrepute among the puritanical
or middle-class section of the community. No one, however, seemed to pay
any further attention to him or to remark the unusual cordiality of
Martin's greeting. A quarter of an hour elapsed before anything of note
occurred. Then, an elderly man whom I did not know, a farmer, by his
dress, drew a copy of the "Kiota Tribune" from his pocket, and,
stretching it towards Johnson, asked with a very marked Yankee twang:

"Sheriff, hev yeou read this 'Tribune'?"

Wheeling half round towards his questioner, the Sheriff replied:

"Yes, sir, I hev." A pause ensued, which was made significant to me by
the fact that the bar-keeper suspended his hand and did not pour out the
whisky he had just been asked to supply--a pause during which the two
faced each other; it was broken by the farmer saying:

"Ez yeou wer out of town to-day, I allowed yeou might hev missed seein'
it. I reckoned yeou'd come straight hyar before yeou went to hum."