He stood on the summit of a cairn close to the river, and every now and
then, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked eastward through the
driving rain, as though expecting some one who came not. But at length,
grown tired of watching, he with an oath descended to a sheltered
corner among the boulders, where a smouldering peat-fire was giving out
more smoke than heat, and, crouching over it, began to fan the embers
with his hat.
He was a somewhat short, though powerful man, in age about forty, very
dark in complexion, with black whiskers growing half over his chin. His
nose was hooked, his eyes were black and piercing, and his lips thin.
His face was battered like an old sailor's, and every careless,
unstudied motion of his body was as wild and reckless as could be.
There was something about his TOUTE ENSEMBLE, in short, that would have
made an Australian policeman swear to him as a convict without the
least hesitation.
There were redeeming points in the man's face, too. There was plenty of
determination, for instance, in that lower jaw, and as he bent now over
the fire, and his thoughts wandered away to other times and places, the
whole appearance of the man seemed to change and become milder and
kindlier; yet when some slight noise makes him lift his head and look
round, there is the old expression back again, and he looks as reckless
and desperate as ever; what he is is more apparent, and the ghost of
what he might have been has not wholly departed.
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