“Thanks very much,” Jellison said. “You are most kind. Now my little holiday will not be spoiled after all.”
Without further delay, Archie departed, striding across the field toward the woods with Joblots trotting after him, taking short, quick, mincing steps which set Fitzgerald off into a paroxysm of laughter. He at once pranced across the room in a very lifelike imitation of the dapper little fellow, but the exhibition came to an untimely end when he stumbled over one of the spreading claw feet of the mahagony table and nearly fell.
“Drat the thing!” he exclaimed crossly. “What in thunder does any one want to have table legs all over the room for?”
“Peace, brother!” droned a sanctimonious voice from the doorway. “Blessed is he who speaks from a pure heart, but the curser and reviler is an abomination.”
Fitz gave a gasp and whirled round, while the other fellows looked up in astonishment.
Standing on the threshold was a most extraordinary figure of a man. He was very tall and very thin, his lank garments of rusty black clinging to his skinny frame in a manner that gave him a ludicrous resemblance to a scarecrow. His face was long and pointed like a razor edge. His hooked nose curved over his thin-lipped mouth like the beak of a bird, and was of a distinctly fiery hue, especially toward the end. His long hair straggled down from under the broken brim of an ancient silk hat which had weathered the storms of many winters. His eyes were rolled piously upward so that little but the whites could be seen, while both hands were clasped over the handle of a grayish-green umbrella of extraordinary size.
The Yale men gazed at him for a moment in petrified silence.
“Well, who are you?” Fitzgerald inquired presently, in a choking voice.
The strange man slowly withdrew his eyes from the ceiling and looked at the little fellow disapprovingly.
“A rebuker of iniquity,” he returned ponderously, “moved by a direct intervention of providence to bring you to a full perception of the error of your ways.”