One man sat apart from the rest, gloomily puffing rings of smoke
into the air. After a while he lay down in the grass with his head
buried in his hat, sleeping to all appearances, while the others talked
and laughed; for he had no stories, though he put in an absent-minded word
or two when he was directly addressed. This was the man from Tennessee,
Matt Henderson, dubbed "Dixie" for short. He was a giant fellow,--
a "great gormin' critter," Samantha Ann Milliken called him;
but if he had held up his head and straightened his broad shoulders,
he would have been thought a man of splendid presence.
He seemed a being from another sphere instead of from another
section of the country. It was not alone the olive tint of the skin,
the mass of wavy dark hair tossed back from a high forehead,
the sombre eyes, and the sad mouth,--a mouth that had never grown
into laughing curves through telling Yankee jokes,--it was not these
that gave him what the boys called a "kind of a downcasted look."
The man from Tennessee had something more than a melancholy temperament;
he had, or physiognomy was a lie, a sorrow tugging at his heart.
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