His shrewd
grey eyes were encased in wrinkles, and when he laughed
his hearty laugh they almost disappeared in a merry line.
He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one or two he was
very fond of, at the expense of the Methodists, that were
known up and down the Dominion, and nobody enjoyed them
more than he did himself. He had once worn his hair in
a high curl on his scholarly forehead, and a silvering
tuft remained brushed upright; he took the old-fashioned
precaution of putting cotton wool in his ears, which gave
him more than ever the look of something highly concentrated
and conserved but in no way detracted from his dignity.
St Andrew's folk accused him of vanity because of the
diamond he wore on his little finger. He was by no means
handsome, but he was intensely individual; perhaps he
had vanity; his people would have forgiven him worse
things. And at Mrs Murchison's tea party he was certainly,
as John Murchison afterward said, "in fine feather."
An absorbing topic held them, a local topic, a topic
involving loss and crime and reprisals. The Federal Bank
had sustained a robbery of five thousand dollars. and in
the course of a few days had placed their cashier under
arrest for suspected complicity. Their cashier was Walter
Ormiston, the only son of old Squire Ormiston, of Moneida
Reservation, ten miles out of Elgin, who had administered
the affairs of the Indians there for more years than the
Federal Bank had existed.
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