His frame was bent and thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory.

At some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but toil had bent and stiffened him.
"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid, rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
"And by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man, sir.

Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the State; no, sir; no, sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's pay--that's all, sir!" Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle.

I'll send another man up there this afternoon." The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty places, and his endurance was marvelous.

He could stand all day at the tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent air, as if it were all mere play.
He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks.