Amorous, uxorious, his whole big body tingling with emotion, he forged along the path across the darkling moorland, breasting the wind-driven sheets of cold rain.
"Hi! slow up there, you great, lumbering, greasy-skinned elephant, and tell me where the devil I've got to in this blasted old wilderness!" a voice shouted.
At the same time he was aware that a narrow strip of the gray pathway in front of him reared itself up on end, assuming human form—a human form, moreover, oddly resembling that of Adrian Savage.
The style of the address was scarcely mollifying, and Challoner had all a practical man's hatred both of being taken by surprise and of encountering phenomena which he could not account for at once in a quite satisfactory and obvious manner. He came straight to the baffling apparition, and looked it steadily, insolently, up and down, the bully in him stirred into rather dangerous activity. The ridicule of his personal appearance wounded his vanity. The interruption of his dreams of love and glory infuriated him; while the fancied likeness of the speaker to Adrian Savage sharpened the edge of both offenses.
"I advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head, or you may happen to find this wilderness an even more blasted and blasting locality than will at all suit you," he said threateningly.
At close quarters the slouching figure was certainly not that of Adrian Savage, nor was the weak, dissolute, blue-eyed face. Yet, although seen indistinctly in the waning light, the said face struck Challoner as unaccountably familiar. What on earth, who on earth was the fellow? Not an ordinary tramp, for his speech, though thick with drink, and his clothes, though ill-kept and dirty, were those of a man of education and position. Challoner continued to scrutinize him. And under that unfriendly and menacing scrutiny the young man's tone changed, declining to petulant almost whining apology.
"You needn't bluster," he said. "I meant no harm; and you know you did look awfully funny and shiny! I want to know where I am. I came across from Havre to Barryport in an onion-boat, because it was cheapest. I'm not overflush of cash. So I've come to look up some of my people who live about here."
"Charming surprise for them," Challoner said.
"And it blew like blazes all last night. Between the motion and the stench of the onions I was as sick as Jonah's whale. Nothing left inside of me except just myself. One of those Breton sailor chaps, hawking his beastly vegetables, came a bit of the way from Barryport with me. He told me to cut across these commons and I should be sure to come out all right; but I expect he lied just to get quit of me."
"More than possible," Challoner said.