Thus, for a moment, in the fading light of that Winter’s day, he paused there on the mountain top above the town, his gaunt face naked, lonely, turned far and lost, into the fierce wintry light of a flaming setting sun, into the lost and lonely vistas of the western ranges, among those hills which had begotten him. When he spoke again his voice was sad and quiet and calmly bitter, and somehow impregnated with that wonderful remote and haunting quality that seemed to come like sorcery from some far distance—a distance that was itself as far and lonely in its haunting spatial qualities as those fading western ranges where his face was turned.
“The Major,” he quietly remarked, “my honored father—Major Lafayette Joyner!—Major of Hominy Run and Whooping Holler, the martial overlord of Sandy Mush, the Bonaparte of Zebulon County and the Pink Beds, the crafty strategist of Frying Pan Gap, the Little Corporal of the Home Guards who conducted that great operation on the river road just four miles east of town,” he sneered, “where two volleys were fired after flying hooves of two of General Sherman’s horse thieves—with no result except to hasten their escape!…The Major!” his voice rose strangely on its note of husky passion. “That genius with the master talent who could do all things—except keep food in the cupboard for a week!” Here he closed his eyes tightly and laughed deliberately again.
“Why, my dear boy!” his uncle said, “he could discourse for hours on end most learnedly—oh! most learnedly!” he howled derisively, “on the beauty and perfection of the Roman Aqueducts while the very roof above us spouted water like a sieve!…Was it the secret of the Sphinx, the sources of the Nile, what songs the sirens sang, the exact year, month, week, day, hour, and moment of the Field of Armageddon with the Coming of the Lord upon the earth, together with all judgments, punishments, rewards, and titles he would mete to us—and particularly to his favored son, the Major!” sneered the boy’s uncle. “Oh, I can assure you, my dear child, he knew about it all! Earth had no mysteries, the immortal and imperturbable skies of time no secrets, the buried and sunken life of the great ocean no strange terrors, nor the last remotest limits of the sidereal universe no marvels which that mighty brain did not at once discover, and would reveal to anyone who had the fortitude to listen!…