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- CHAPTER XXV.
THE COSMOPOLITAN MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE.
In the act of retiring, the cosmopolitan was met by a passenger, who
with the bluff _abord_ of the West, thus addressed him, though a
stranger.
"Queer 'coon, your friend. Had a little skrimmage with him myself.
Rather entertaining old 'coon, if he wasn't so deuced analytical.
Reminded me somehow of what I've heard about Colonel John Moredock, of
Illinois, only your friend ain't quite so good a fellow at bottom, I
should think."
It was in the semicircular porch of a cabin, opening a recess from the
deck, lit by a zoned lamp swung overhead, and sending its light
vertically down, like the sun at noon. Beneath the lamp stood the
speaker, affording to any one disposed to it no unfavorable chance for
scrutiny; but the glance now resting on him betrayed no such rudeness.
A man neither tall nor stout, neither short nor gaunt; but with a body
fitted, as by measure, to the service of his mind. For the rest, one
less favored perhaps in his features than his clothes; and of these the
beauty may have been less in the fit than the cut; to say nothing of
the fineness of the nap, seeming out of keeping with something the
reverse of fine in the skin; and the unsuitableness of a violet vest,
sending up sunset hues to a countenance betokening a kind of bilious
habit.
But, upon the whole, it could not be fairly said that his appearance was
unprepossessing; indeed, to the congenial, it would have been doubtless
not uncongenial; while to others, it could not fail to be at least
curiously interesting, from the warm air of florid cordiality,
contrasting itself with one knows not what kind of aguish sallowness of
saving discretion lurking behind it. Ungracious critics might have
thought that the manner flushed the man, something in the same
fictitious way that the vest flushed the cheek. And though his teeth
were singularly good, those same ungracious ones might have hinted that
they were too good to be true; or rather, were not so good as they might
be; since the best false teeth are those made with at least two or three
blemishes, the more to look like life. But fortunately for better
constructions, no such critics had the stranger now in eye; only the
cosmopolitan, who, after, in the first place, acknowledging his advances
with a mute salute--in which acknowledgment, if there seemed less of
spirit than in his way of accosting the Missourian, it was probably
because of the saddening sequel of that late interview--thus now
replied: "Colonel John Moredock," repeating the words abstractedly;
"that surname recalls reminiscences. Pray," with enlivened air, "was he
anyway connected with the Moredocks of Moredock Hall, Northamptonshire,
England?"
"I know no more of the Moredocks of Moredock Hall than of the Burdocks
of Burdock Hut," returned the other, with the air somehow of one whose
fortunes had been of his own making; "all I know is, that the late
Colonel John Moredock was a famous one in his time; eye like Lochiel's;
finger like a trigger; nerve like a catamount's; and with but two little
oddities--seldom stirred without his rifle, and hated Indians like
snakes."
"Your Moredock, then, would seem a Moredock of Misanthrope Hall--the
Woods. No very sleek creature, the colonel, I fancy."
"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly
headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians--how the
late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians,
to be sure!"
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