Tappan stared at him a second incredulously.  Then he grinned, showing his teeth like a dog.

“Lord! then that jailbird is one of your friends, is he?” he said.  He had just lit his pipe.  He puffed at it, and deliberately blew the smoke into the little barber’s face.

Flynn bent over towards him with a sudden motion, and his mild, consequential face in the cloud of smoke changed into something terrible, from its very absurdity.  His blue eyes glittered greenly; he lifted the razor and cut the air with it close to the other man’s face.  Tappan heard the hiss of it, and drew back involuntarily, his expression changing.

“What the devil are you up to?” he growled, with wary eyes on the other’s face.

The barber continued to hold the razor like a bayonet in rest, fixed within an inch of the other’s nose.  “I’m up to kickin’ you out of my parlor if you don’t stop speakin’ individuously disregardin’ my friends,” said he, with an emphasis which was ridiculous and yet impressive.  The other men chuckled again, then grew grave.

“Come back here and finish up my job, John,” Amidon called out; yet he watched him warily.

“Here, put up that razor!” the postmaster called out.

“I’ll put it up when you stop speakin’ mellifluously of my friends,” declared the barber.  “There ain’t nobody in this parlor goin’ to speak a word against Captain Carroll if I’m in hearin’; there ain’t an honester man in this town.”

The barber’s back was towards the door.  Suddenly Tappan’s eyes stared past him, his grin widened inexplicably.  Flynn became aware of a pregnant silence throughout the shop.  He turned, following Tappan’s gaze, and Arthur Carroll stood there.  He had entered silently and had heard all the last of the discussion.  Every face in the shop was turned towards him; he stood looking at them with the curious expression of a man taken completely off guard.  All the serene force and courtesy which usually masked his innermost emotions had, as it were, slipped off; for a flash he stood revealed, soul-naked, for any one who could see.  None there could fully see, although every man looked, sharpened with curiosity and suspicion.  Carroll was white and haggard, unsmiling, despairing, even pathetic; his eyes actually looked suffused.  Then in a flash it was over, and Arthur Carroll in his usual guise stood before them—­it was like one of those metamorphoses of which one reads in fairy tales.  Carroll stood there smiling, stately, gracefully, even confidentially condescending.  It was as if he appealed to their sense of humor, that he, Carroll, stood among them addressing them as their equals.

“Good-day, gentleman,” he said, and came forward.

Little Willy Eddy sprang up with a frightened look and gave him his chair, murmuring in response to Carroll’s deprecating thanks that he was just going; but he did not go.  He remained in the doorway staring.  He had a vague idea of some judgment descending upon them all from this great man whom they had been slandering.