He finished the first cigarette, and rolled another from sheer
force of habit rather than because he really wanted one. He
lifted one foot, and laid it across his knee, and was drawing a
match along the sole of his boot when his eyes chanced to rest
for a moment upon a flutter of green, which showed briefly around
the corner of a great square rock poised insecurely upon one
corner, as if it were about to hurl its great bulk down upon the
river it had watched so long. He held the blazing match poised
midway to its destination while he looked; then he put it to the
use he had meant it for, pulled his hat-brim down over his right
eye and ear to shield them from the burn of the sun, and went
picking his way idly over to the place.
"HUL-lo!" he greeted, in the manner of one who refuses to
acknowledge the seriousness of a situation which confronts him
suddenly. "What's the excitement?"
There was no excitement whatever. There was Peppajee, hunched up
against the rock in that uncomfortable attitude which permits a
man to come at the most intimate relations with the outside of
his own ankle, upon which he was scowling in seeming malignity.
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