... . - . . li^csvf-X .- . - . . . t 





CHAPTER VI 



A SUMMER S PIPPIN 



GABE HOTCHKISS was a forehanded vet 

 eran who had developed along &quot;the cool 

 sequestered vale of life &quot; until it was hard 

 to distinguish him from the materials he had 

 worked with. He wore the aspect of a sinewy 

 old trunk, gray and gnarled, whose roots in the 

 ground have outspread the branches in the air. I 

 was afraid his thrift was earthy. I could not 

 quite make out if that stoop in his shoulders was 

 humility or gravitation. His hair grew bushy 

 and gray all over his head and down his jaws to 

 a sort of mossy stalactite on his chin (I was get 

 ting bald at forty-four). He never was sick a 

 day in his life after he teethed, barring three days 

 that he was laid up that year of the Chicago fire 

 by Squire Losee s bull that hooked him under 

 the rib and threw him over a stone fence. He 

 had risen and set as regularly as the sun for sixty- 

 five years, and there was no physical intimation 



70 



