This settled it--not a day over twenty-five, of course!
The man's fingers tightened on the edges of the paper. He was still
reading, entirely unconscious that my knees were within two inches
of his own.
Then I heard this exclamation--
"It's a damned outrage!"
My curiosity got the better of me--I coughed.
The paper dropped instantly.
"My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand
on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was
opposite me."
If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me.
My picture had vanished.
He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown
eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine
determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full
throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught
together by a loose black cravat--a handsome, rather dashing sort of a
man for one so old.
"I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the
negroes around here.
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