about him. It was not in any defined way--I did not fancy that he was
machinating, for instance, any sort of mischief in the business before
us--but I had a notion that he was not quite what he pretended.

Perhaps his _personnel_ prejudiced me--though I could not quite say why.
He was a tall, lank man--rather long of limb, long of head, and gaunt of
face. He wanted teeth at both sides, and there was rather a skull-like
cavity when he smiled--which was pretty often. His eyes were small and
reddish, as if accustomed to cry; and when everything went smoothly were
dull and dove-like, but when things crossed or excited him, which
occurred when his own pocket or plans were concerned, they grew
singularly unpleasant, and greatly resembled those of some not amiable
animal--was it a rat, or a serpent? It was a peculiar concentrated
vigilance and rapine that I have seen there. But that was long
afterwards. Now, indeed, they were meek, and sad, and pink.

He had an ambition, too, to pass for a high-bred gentleman, and thought
it might be done by a somewhat lofty and drawling way of talking, and
distributing his length of limb in what he fancied were easy attitudes.
If the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, so are the elegances of a
vulgar man; and his made me wince.

I might be all in the wrong--and was, no doubt, unreasonable--for he bore
a high character, and passed for a very gentlemanlike man among the
villagers. He was also something of a religious light, and had for a time
conformed to Methodism, but returned to the Church. He had a liking for
long sermons, and a sad abhorrence of amusements, and sat out the morning
and the evening services regularly--and kept up his dissenting connection
too, and gave them money--and appeared in print, in all charitable
lists--and mourned over other men's backslidings and calamities in a