“Here you be,” he said, taking Austen’s hand warmly and a little ceremoniously; “I asked ’em here to meet ye.”

“To meet me!” Austen repeated.

“Wanted they should know you,” said Mr. Redbrook.

“They’ve all heard of you and what you did for Zeb.”

Austen flushed.  He was aware that he was undergoing a cool and critical examination by those present, and that they were men who used all their faculties in making up their minds.

“I’m very glad to meet any friends of yours, Mr. Redbrook,” he said.  “What I did for Meader isn’t worth mentioning.  It was an absolutely simple case.”

“Twahn’t so much what ye did as how ye did it,” said Mr. Redbrook.  “It’s kind of rare in these days,” he added, with the manner of commenting to himself on the circumstance, “to find a young lawyer with brains that won’t sell ’em to the railrud.  That’s what appeals to me, and to some other folks I know—­especially when we take into account the situation you was in and the chances you had.”

Austen’s silence under this compliment seemed to create an indefinable though favourable impression, and the member from Mercer permitted himself to smile.

“These men are all friends of mine, and members of the House,” he said, “and there’s more would have come if they’d had a longer notice.  Allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Widgeon of Hull.”

“We kind of wanted to look you over,” said Mr. Widgeon, suiting the action to the word.  “That’s natural ain’t it?”

“Kind of size you up,” added Mr. Jarley of Wye, raising his eyes.  “Callate you’re sizable enough.”

“Wish you was in the House,” remarked Mr. Adams of Barren.  “None of us is much on talk, but if we had you, I guess we could lay things wide open.”

“If you was thar, and give it to ’em as hot as you did when you was talkin’ for Zeb, them skunks in the front seats wouldn’t know whether they was afoot or hossback,” declared Mr. Williams of Devon, a town adjoining Mercer.

“I used to think railrud gov’ment wahn’t so bad until I come to the House this time,” remarked a stocky member from Oxford; “it’s sheer waste of money for the State to pay a Legislature.  They might as well run things from the New York office—­you know that.”

“We might as well wear so many Northeastern uniforms with brass buttons,” a sinewy hill farmer from Lee put in.  He had a lean face that did not move a muscle, but a humorous gray eye that twinkled.

In the meantime Mr. Redbrook looked on with an expression of approval which was (to Austen) distinctly pleasant, but more or less mystifying.

“I guess you ain’t disappointed ’em much,” he declared, when the round was ended; “most of ’em knew me well enough to understand that cattle and live stock in general, includin’ humans, is about as I represent ’em to be.”

“We have some confidence in your judgment, Brother Redbrook,” answered Mr. Terry of Lee, “and now we’ve looked over the goods, it ain’t set back any, I callate.”