BENJAMIN McNEIL MURDOCK
Roman coin. And the stranger said to him, "I'm Ben Murdock."
That was all Murdock did say. For the rest of the evening he listened. And he listened in a peculiar way. After the first quick glance at this one or that one with whom he shook hands he looked past them, with a troubled frown, as if dissatisfied, and thereafter he avoided meeting their eyes in a direct gaze.
It turned out to be a habit of manner. He had a trick of looking at the chest of the person that stood talking to him; and when they were all sitting again he looked at their knees or at their feet, with no expression of shyness or self-consciousness. Only the hired man's face he studied thoughtfully, in an absent-minded muse. And the hired man, smoking apart, with his air of distinguished vacancy, remained beside the greasy stove in silence, refusing to answer even when they spoke to him.
"He's sort o' dumb," they explained, in the idiom of the valley, meaning by "dumb" half-witted.
Ben Murdock showed little emotion over the story of the murder. Once, when they were telling about the man who had been sent to jail for stealing the shot-gun, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead as if it were wet with perspiration. And a moment later, when they were telling how the other hired men had invariably turned out to be thieves, he suddenly raised to them a
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