THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.

CHAPTER XIII.

CURIOSITY.

People will talk. Ciascun lo dice is a tune that is played oftener than the national air of this country or any other.

“That’s what they say.  Means to marry her, if she is his cousin.  Got money himself,—­that’s the story,—­but wants to come and live in the old place, and get the Dudley property by-and-by.”—­“Mother’s folks was wealthy.”—­“Twenty-three to twenty-five year old.”—­“He a’n’t more’n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside.”—­“Looks as if he knew too much to be only twenty year old.”—­“Guess he’s been through the mill,—­don’t look so green, anyhow,—­hey?  Did y’ ever mind that cut over his left eyebrow?”

So they gossipped in Rockland.  The young fellows could make nothing of Dick Venner.  He was shy and proud with the few who made advances to him.  The young ladies called him handsome and romantic, but he looked at them like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit of ordering his wives by the dozen.

“What do you think of the young man over there at the Venners’?” said Miss Arabella Thornton to her father.

“Handsome,” said the Judge, “but dangerous-looking.  His face is indictable at common law.  Do you know, my dear, I think there is a blank at the Sheriff’s office, with a place for his name in it?”

The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he had just listened to the verdict of the jury and was going to pronounce sentence.

“Have you heard anything against him?” said the Judge’s daughter.

“Nothing.  But I don’t like these mixed bloods and half-told stories.  Besides, I have seen a good many desperate fellows at the bar, and I have a fancy they all have a look belonging to them.  The worst one I ever sentenced looked a good deal like this fellow.  A wicked mouth.  All our other features are made for us; but a man makes his own mouth.”

“Who was the person you sentenced?”

“He was a young fellow that undertook to garrote a man who had won his money at cards.  The same slender shape, the same cunning, fierce look, smoothed over with a plausible air.  Depend upon it, there is an expression in all the sort of people that live by their wits when they can, and by worse weapons when their wits fail them, that we old law-doctors know just as well as the medical counselors know the marks of disease in a man’s face.  Dr. Kittredge looks at a man and says he is going to die; I look at another man and say he is going to be hanged, if nothing happens.  I don’t say so of this one, but I don’t like his looks.  I wonder Dudley Venner takes to him so kindly.”

“It’s all for Elsie’s sake,” said Miss Thornton; “I feel quite sure of that.  He never does anything that is not meant for her in some way.  I suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about the house.  She rides a good deal since he has been here.  Have you seen them galloping about together?  He looks like my idea of a Spanish bandit on that wild horse of his.”