His dog, George, too, was somewhere within
reach, and so were his fishing-pole and creel, with its leather
shoulder-band polished like a razor-strop. You who read this never saw
Jonathan, perhaps, but you can easily carry his picture in your mind by
remembering some one of the other old fellows you used to see on Sunday
mornings hitching their horses to the fence outside of the country
church, or sauntering through the woods with a fish-pole over their
shoulders and a creel by their sides, or with their heads together on
the porch of some cross-roads store, bartering eggs and butter for
cotton cloth and brown sugar. All these simple-minded, open-aired,
out-of-doors old fellows, with the bark on them, are very much alike.
The only difference between the two men lay in the expression of the two
faces. Jonathan always looked straight at you when he talked, so that
you could fathom his eyes as you would fathom a deep pool that mirrored
the stars. This old man's eyes wavered from one to another, lighting
first on the jury, then on the buzzard of a District Attorney, and then
on the Judge, with whom rested the freedom which meant life or which
meant imprisonment: at his age--death.
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