Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/102

 within or without, he saw the delicate oval face with those great brown eyes smiling as they did the night he met her in the hall of his old home.

At length he awoke from his reverie with his eye resting unconsciously on Larkin, the Judge's opponent. He had never seen him before, though his name had become known in every county of the state.

He was a man of more than the average height, of powerful build, high intellectual forehead, a full beard, long, silken, snow white. His hair, also long and white, was inclined to curl at the ends, and a pair of piercing black eyes looked out fearlessly from shaggy brows. He carried himself with instinctive dignity, and his whole appearance proclaimed a bold and powerful leader of men.

Rumour said that he had been a Wesleyan preacher in England but had been expelled in some factional fight and had sought his fortunes in America. Darker rumour whispered that he had a criminal record and that he had never even attained citizenship in the country of his adoption. Such rumours, however, counted for nothing in the tainted atmosphere of the riot and revolution of the Reconstruction period. From the sewers of the North, jail birds and ex-convicts had poured into the stricken South as vultures follow the wake of a victorious army.