Pete gave this detail with some humour, wagging his head back and forth to imitate the magisterial treatment of the quandary, and putting up first one hand, then the other, stretching out first one rough boot, then the other, to signify the various points of the dilemma.
Amos James did not laugh. He still gravely gazed at the narrator.
'Whyn't he git bail?' he demanded gruffly.
'Waal, he didn't--'kase he couldn't. The old man, he fixed the bail without so much dilly-dallyin' an' jouncin' 'roun' in his mind ez ye mought expec'. He jes' put on his specs, an' polished his old bald noodle with his red h-h-handkercher, an' tuk a fraish chaw o' terbacco, an' put his nose in his book, an' tuk it out ter brag ez them crazy bugs in N-N-Nashvul sent him a book ev'y time they made a batch o' new laws--pore, prideful old critter mus' hev been lyin'!--an' then he put his nose in his book agin like he smelt the law an' trailed it by scent. 'Twarn't more'n haffen hour 'fore he tuk it out, an' say the least bail he could take war a thousand d-d-dollars fur the defendant, an' five hunderd fur each of his sureties--like it hev been in ev'y sech case 'fore a jestice s-sence the Big Smoky Mountings war made.'
Pete laughed, his great fore-teeth, his flexible lip, his long, bony face and tangled mane giving him something of an equine aspect. His mood was unusually jocular; and, indeed, a man might experience some elation of spirit to be the only one of the 'lopers round' at the mill who had been present at a trial of such significance. The close attention accorded his every word demonstrated the interest in the subject, and the guffaws which greeted his sketch of the familiar character of the old 'Squair' was a flattering tribute to his skill as a _raconteur_. The peculiar antagonism of his disposition was manifested only in the delay and digressions by which he thwarted Amos James's eagerness to know why Parson Kelsey had not been admitted to bail. He could not accurately interpret the indignation in the miller's look, and he cared less for the threat it expressed. Cowardice was not predicable of one of the Cayce tribe. Perhaps it might have been agreeable for the community if the discordant Pete could have been more readily intimidated.