XXVII
THE HERMIT OF QUASI
The newcomer was a man of fifty or fifty-five years of age. He was slender, but rather with the slenderness of the red Indian than with that suggestive of weakness. Indeed, the boys observed that his muscles seemed to be developed out of proportion to his frame, as if he had been intended by nature for a scholar and had made an athlete of himself instead.
There was not an ounce of unnecessary fat upon his person, and yet he gave no sign of being underfed. Instead his flesh had the peculiar hardness of the frontiersman’s who eats meat largely in excess of other foods.
A little strip across the upper part of his forehead, which showed as he stood there with his hat removed, suggested that his complexion had once been fair, but that exposure had tanned it to the color of a saddle.
His costume was an odd one, but it was made of the best of materials, now somewhat worn, but fit still to hold their own in comparison with far newer garments of cheaper quality. Perhaps they were aided in this by the fact that they had evidently been made for him by some tailor who knew how to make clothes set upon their wearer as if they were a part of him.
Yet his dress was perfectly simple. He wore a sort of Norfolk jacket of silk corduroy—a cloth well nigh as durable as sole leather—with breeches of the same, buttoned at and below the knee, and covered at bottom with close-fitting calf-skin leggings of the kind that grooms and dandy horsemen affect.
The hat he held in his hand, as he addressed the company that had courteously risen to receive him, was an exceedingly limp felt affair, soft to the head, light in weight and capable of assuming any shape its wearer might choose to give it. His shoes were Indian moccasins.
No sign of linen appeared anywhere about his person, but just above the top button of his jacket a bit of gray flannel shirt showed in color harmony with his other garments.