farmer's heart not
less sincere because unaesthetic. The farmer's toil had hardly yet
begun, the winter's hunt being just concluded, and each of the
stationers with a string of led horses was bound for his camps and
caches to bring in the skins that made the profit of the season.

One of this group of three was the psalm-singer of the blockhouse. His
name was Xerxes Alexander Anxley, and he was unceremoniously called by
the community "X," and by Mivane "the unknown quantity," for he was
something of an enigma, and his predilections provoked much speculation.
He was a religionist of ascetic, extreme views,--a type rare in this
region,--coming originally from the colony of the Salzburgers
established in Georgia.

We are less disposed to be tolerant of individual persuasions which
imply a personal and unpleasant reflection. Xerxes Alexander Anxley
disapproved of dancing, and the community questioned his sanity; for
these early pioneers in the region of the Great Smoky Range carried the
rifle over one shoulder and the fiddle over the other. He disapproved of
secular songs and idle stories, and the settlement questioned his taste;
for it was the delight of the stationers, old and young, to gather
around the hearth, and, while the chestnuts roasted in the fire for the
juniors, and the jovial horn, as it was called, circulated among the
elders, the oft-told story was rehearsed and the old song sung anew. He
even disapproved of the jovial horn--and the settlement questioned his
sincerity.

This man Anxley looked his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic
countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come
suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable,
seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their
inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was
reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings,
worn on a sturdy and powerful frame. His mouth was shut hard and fast
upon his convictions, as if to denote that he could not be argued out of
them, and when the lips parted its lines were scarcely more mobile, and
his words were usually framed to doubt one's state of grace and to
contravene one's tenets as to final salvation. He rode much of the time
with the reins loose on his horse's neck, and perhaps no man in the
saddle had ever been so addicted to psalmody since the days of
Cromwell's troopers. His theological disputations gr