"He looks like hell," concluded Uncle Jake.
We found him, a minute later, curled up on a heap of straw on the
shady side of our big barn. He got up as we approached, and stared at
us with a curious derisive intentness of glance, slightly
disconcerting.
"You are Englishmen," he said quietly.
The man's voice was charming, with that unmistakable quality which
challenges attention even in Mayfair, and enthrals it in the
wilderness. We nodded, and he continued easily: "It is late, and some
twenty-six miles, so I hear, to the nearest town. May I spend the
night in your barn. I don't smoke--in barns."
While he was speaking, we had time to examine him. His appearance was
inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark
hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless,
he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously
one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except
his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of
me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable
to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips.
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