'What a queer fellow he must be! Wears nothing but the kilt, speaks Gaelic, swings in tree-tops, and is shy! A rara avis indeed.'
'Ah! here he comes. Archie, spread the awning out of doors, lay the table, bring a jug of cold maté and the cigars.'
Truly Archie was a curious Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie, and though the hermit assured us he was only a baby when he bought him in Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety—wrinkled, wizened, and weird. But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which the hermit called his kilt. He was, in fact, an African orang-outang.
'Come and shake hands with the good gentlemen, Archie.'
Archie knitted his brows, and looked at us without moving. The hermit laughingly handed him a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles. These he put on with all the gravity of some ancient professor of Sanscrit, then looked us all over once again.
We could stand this no longer, and so burst into a chorus of laughing.
'Don't laugh longer than you can help, boys. See, Archie is angry.'
Archie was. He showed a mouth full of fearful-looking fangs, and fingered his club in a way that was not pleasant. 214
'Archie, you may have some peaches presently.'