He was
angry at your suspicions, and to be entirely your debtor for
services didn't please him. His gift to me was made simply because
he did not wish to pay you in substance and me in thanks."
"I don't go so far as to call him an unconvicted criminal, but I'll
swear his record isn't clear as daylight, and I'm morally convinced
that if men's deeds were written on their foreheads Carleton Barker,
esquire, would wear his hat down over his eyes. I don't like him. I
instinctively dislike him. Did you see the look in his eyes when I
mentioned the knife?"
"I did," I replied. "And it made me shudder."
"It turned every drop of blood in my veins cold," said Parton. "It
made me feel that if he had had that knife within reach he would
have trampled it to powder, even if every stamp of his foot cut his
flesh through to the bone. Malignant is the word to describe that
glance, and I'd rather encounter a rattle-snake than see it again."
Parton spoke with such evident earnestness that I took refuge in
silence. I could see just where a man of Parton's temperament--which
was cold and eminently judicial even when his affections were
concerned--could find that in Barker at which to cavil, but, for all
that, I could not sympathize with the extreme view he took of his
character.
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