and sunburned cheek, which seemed all of one color and outline, made it
impossible to detect the gray of the one or the hollowness of the other,
and gave no indication of his age. Yet there was clearly no mistake.
Here was Gabriel Lane seizing their nervously cold fingers and
presenting them to their "Uncle Sylvester."

Far from attempting to kiss Kitty, the stranger for an instant seemed
oblivious of the little hand she offered him in the half-preoccupied
bow he gave her. But Marie was not so easily passed over, and, with her
audacious face challenging his, he abstractedly imparted to the shake of
her hand something of the fervor that he should have shown his relative.
And, then, still warming his feet on the fender, he seemed to have
forgotten them both.

"Accustomed as you have been, sir," said the Reverend Mr. Dexter,
seizing upon an awkward silence, and accenting it laboriously, "perhaps
I should say INURED as you have been to the exciting and stirring
incidents of a lawless and adventurous community, you doubtless find
in a pastoral, yet cultivated and refined, seclusion like Lakeville a
degree of"--

"Oh, several degrees," said Uncle Sylvester, blandly flicking bits
of buffalo hair from his well-fitting trousers; "it's colder, you
know--much colder."

"I was referring to a less material contrast," continued Mr. Dexter,
with a resigned smile; "yet, as to the mere question of cold, I am
told, sir, that in California there are certain severe regions of
altitude--although the mean temperature"--