Explore "The Debatable Land" by Arthur Willis Colton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the early days of Squire Map's seclusion he had not yet made the hermit of himself that Hagar was familiar with later. Men have said that he never went outside the village after the fall of '58, at least never to Hamilton. The grooves where his bitterness ran plainly deepened as the stream wore them year by year; possibly the gradual noting how his withdrawal made no empty place among busy men, how feigning friends who had turned enemies and rebellious sons went their way and prospered, helped to widen and darken the shadow of his misanthropy. He had been a lawyer, a politician, and made his stir in his day. In 1860 he was a gray, grim gentleman in a long coat and tall, black hat, with a caverned, bony face and large frame, whom it was not considered wisdom to address without good reason, but who was seen often enough about the village.
And it was not so strange as to startle Widow Bourn in her halcyon calm when he knocked at her door one afternoon, and entered, doffing his tall hat.