"
Frank almost laughed at the free and easy request, though he felt
at once pained by the man's irreligion, and abashed by his
Stoicism;--would he have behaved even as well in such a case?
"I have not five pounds in the world."
"Good! we shall understand each other better."
"But the suit of clothes you shall have at once."
"Good again! Let it be your oldest; for I must do a little
rock-scrambling here, for purposes of my own."
So off went Frank to fetch the clothes, puzzling over his new
parishioner. The man was not altogether well bred, either in voice or
manner; but there was an ease, a confidence, a sense of power, which
made Frank feel that he had fallen in with a very strong nature; and
one which had seen many men, and many lands, and profited by what it
had seen.
When he returned, he found the stranger busy at his ablutions, and
gradually appearing as a somewhat dapper, handsome fellow, with a
bright grey eye, a short nose, a firm, small mouth, a broad and
upright forehead, across the left side of which ran a fearful scar.
"That's a shrewd mark," said he, as he caught Frank's eye fixed on it,
while he sat coolly arranging himself on the bedside. "I got it in
fair fight, though, by a Crow's tomahawk in the Rocky Mountains. And
here's another token (lifting up his black curls), which a Greek
robber gave me in the Morea. I've another under my head, for which I
have to thank a Tartar, and one or two more little remembrances of
flood and field up and down me.
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