Under low-hanging winter boughs and summer arches did Lot Gordon pry and slink and lie in wait, his fine, sharp face peering through snowy tunnels or white spring thickets like a white fox, hungrily intent upon the secrets of nature.
There was a deep mystery in this to the village people.

They could not fathom the reason for a man's haunting wild places like a wild animal unless he hunted and trapped like the Hautville sons.

They were suspicious of dark motives, upon which they exercised their imaginations.
Lot Gordon's talk, moreover, was an enigma to them.

He was no favorite, and only his goodly property tempered his ill repute.
People could not help identifying him, in a measure, with his noble old house, with the stately pillared portico, with his silver-plate and damask and mahogany, which his great-grandfather had brought from the old country, with his fine fields and his money in the bank.

He held, moreover, a large mortgage on the house opposite, where Burr Gordon lived with his mother.