Some said at once, with a sudden look of vague horror, that it was so.

That Barney Thayer was indeed growing deformed; that they had noticed it.

Others scouted the idea.

"Saw him this morning, and he's as straight as he ever was," they said.
Whether Barney Thayer's back was, indeed, bowed into that terrible spinal curve or not, Thomas Payne could not tell by any agreement of witnesses.

If some, gifted with acute spiritual insight, really perceived that dreadful warping of a diseased will, and clothed it with a material image for their own grosser senses; or if Barney, through dwelling upon his own real but hidden infirmity, had actually come unconsciously to give it a physical expression, and walked at times through the village with his back bent like his spirit, although not diseased, Thomas Payne could only speculate.