is called rawboned; all his
joints were large and prominent, from his knuckles to his ankles. He had
large, long feet and hands, and large, long ears; his feet shambled when
he walked, his arms dangled from the shoulders like the arms of a wooden
doll, and he had a long, sinewed throat, which no cravat or collar could
hide, though he wore them up to his ears. Not that he did so wear them,
however: he had no idea that his throat was ugly; he never thought about
it at all. He had a long face, small, mild blue eyes, thin, lank brown
hair, a large mouth, and long, narrow nose; he was, also, the most
awkward man in the world. Was there no redeeming point? Hardly. His
fingers were nicely finished at the ends, and sometimes he had rather a
sweet smile. But in the contemplation of his joints, shoulders, elbows,
wrists, and knuckles, even the student of anatomy hardly got as far as
his finger-ends; and as to the smile, nobody saw it but the Mannings,
who did not care about it. In origin he was, as before mentioned, a
nondescript, having come from the up-country, where Southern ways shade
off into mountain roughness; which again gives place to the
river-people, and they, farther on, to the Hoosiers and Buckeyes, who
are felicitously designated by the expressive title of "Western
Yankees." He had inherited the saw-mill from an uncle, who had tried to
make something of it, failed, and died. Ambrose, being a patient man,
and one of smallest possible personal expenditure, managed to live, and
even to save a little money--but only a little. He had been there twelve
years, and was now thirty-eight years old. All this the whole town of
Wilbarger knew, or might have known; it was no secret. But the saw-mill
had a secret of its own, besides. Up stairs, in the back part, was a
small room with a lock on the door, and windows with red cloth nailed
over them in place of glass. Here Ambrose spent many moments of his day,
and all of his evenings, quite alone. His red lights shone across the
marsh, and could be seen from Vickery Island and the drawbridge; but
they were not visible on the Wilbarger side, and attracted, therefore,
no attention. However, it is doubtful whether they would have attracted
attention anyway. Wilbarger people did not throw away their somewhat
rarely excited interest upon Ambrose Cranch, who represented to them the
flattest commonplace. They knew when his logs came, they knew the
quantity and quality of his boards, they saw