I did not
cultivate his acquaintance; chance threw us together and we
separated after exchanging a few polite commonplaces, but his
big flamboyant image remains vividly impressed on my mind.
At noon, in the brilliant sunshine, as I came loiteringly down
the long slope from Doles Wood to the village, he overtook me.
He was a huge man, over six feet high, nobly built, suggesting
a Scandinavian origin, with a broad blond face, good features,
and prominent blue eyes, and his hair was curly and shone like
gold in the sunlight. Had he been a mere labourer in a
workman's rough clay-stained clothes, one would have stood
still to look at and admire him, and say perhaps what a
magnificent warrior he would have looked with sword and spear
and plumed helmet, mounted on a big horse! But alas! he had
the stamp of the irreclaimable blackguard on his face; and
that same handsome face was just then disfigured with several
bruises in three colours--blue, black, and red. Doubtless he
had been in a drunken brawl on the previous evening and had
perhaps been thrown out of some low public-house and properly
punished.
In his dress he was as remarkable as in his figure. Bright
blue trousers much too small for his stout legs, once the
property, no doubt, of some sporting young gent of loud tastes
in colours; a spotted fancy waistcoat, not long enough to meet
the trousers, a dirty scarlet tie, long black frock-coat,
shiny in places, and a small dirty grey cap which only covered
the topmost part of his head of golden hair.
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