He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one or two he was very fond of, at the expense of the Methodists, that were known up and down the Dominion, and nobody enjoyed them more than he did himself.

He had once worn his hair in a high curl on his scholarly forehead, and a silvering tuft remained brushed upright; he took the old-fashioned precaution of putting cotton wool in his ears, which gave him more than ever the look of something highly concentrated and conserved but in no way detracted from his dignity.

St Andrew's folk accused him of vanity because of the diamond he wore on his little finger.

He was by no means handsome, but he was intensely individual; perhaps he had vanity; his people would have forgiven him worse things.
And at Mrs Murchison's tea party he was certainly, as John Murchison afterward said, "in fine feather." An absorbing topic held them, a local topic, a topic involving loss and crime and reprisals.

The Federal Bank had sustained a robbery of five thousand dollars, and in the course of a few days had placed their cashier under arrest for suspected complicity.