I had shut the door to.  Then I turned around and there he was.  I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much.  I reckoned I was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken—that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it.  His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines.  It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers.  There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl—a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.  As for his clothes—just rags, that was all.  He had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then.  His hat was laying on the floor—an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little.  I set the candle down.  I noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed.  He kept a-looking me all over.  By and by he says:

"Starchy clothes—very.  You think you're a good deal of a big-bug, _don't_ you?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he.  "You've put on considerable many frills since I been away.  I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you.  You're educated, too, they say—can read and write.  You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't?  _I'll_ take it out of you.  Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?—who told you you could?"

"The widow.  She told me."

"The widow, hey?—and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?"

"Nobody never told her."