He came with a shambling gait. The tall, thin, loose-jointed man, resting with one hand on the pulpit at his side, in every way belied the pompous tribute which had just been paid him.
I watched him. I studied the face masked in a close-cropped gray beard. I studied the angles of the loosely hung limbs and the swinging body clad in unobtrusive brown. For a moment I doubted. Then he spoke. I heard his voice, and it seemed as though it were threaded with a sharp, shrill note of bitterness. His eyes were not turned to us. Gladys Todd must have thought them fixed on a spot in the ceiling, but to me they were watching a flake of cloud hovering just above the tall pine across the clearing. Gladys Todd must have thought me beside her, sitting upright on the very edge of my seat, but I was back in the mountains; I could feel Penelope's brown hand in mine and I could see her proud smile as she looked up at me and said: "That's father; he's studying"; I could see her father as he leaned on his hoe, beaten in his fight with the ever-charging weeds; I could see him in the murky light of the cabin, a trembling hazy figure in the gun smoke; and again, with the devils of retribution at his heels, flying for the bush. Now the worthless, shiftless man, after long years, stood before me, a professor in truth, a professor of life, and perhaps he would give belated expression to what was in his mind that day as he studied the flake of cloud.
Unrolling a portentous manuscript on the pulpit, the lecturer began to read in a mechanical voice. The restless shuffling of feet and a volley of dry coughs soon spoke the hostile attitude of the audience, a longing for the coming of Valerian Harassan. The Professor did not heed them. He read on, pompous phrases such as might have come from the lips of Mr. Pound. He was unconscious of the increasing hostility of his hearers. When he stopped suddenly, it was not because the feet in the rear of the hall were shuffling a rising chorus of protest, despite the frantic signals of Judge Bundy and Doctor Todd's upraised hand. What he saw in his own manuscript checked him, for stepping back from the desk, he frowned at it. The corners of his mouth twitched in a passing smile, and pouncing upon his handiwork, he held it at arm's length, dangling before the astonished eyes of the company.