ARCHIE
"Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie."
(Pope—"Ode to Solitude")
He was an unusually wretched semblance of a man. A tattered coat—some one's cast-off overcoat—green, greasy, mud-stained, clung round his shaking knees; trousers which might have been of any hue originally, but were now "sad-colored," flapped about his thin legs and fringed his ankles; shoes, slashed across the front for ease, revealed bare feet beneath; an antique and dirty red woolen muffler swathed his neck almost to the ears. Surmounting these woeful garments appeared a yellow, wrinkled face surrounded by a straggling fringe of gray whisker; gray locks strayed from an old red handkerchief tied round the brows under a dilapidated wide-awake hat. To add to his woe-begone aspect, the poor wretch was streaming with wet, for a Scottish mist had been steadily falling all the morning.
Leaning on his stick, the man slowly shuffled up the central path toward the porch in which I was sitting, striving to get the nearest possible approach to an open-air pipe. Touching his sorry headgear, he looked at me with mild eyes of faded blue, and smiled benignly as he asked:
"Could I see himsel'?"
I had not long come to that part of the country, and I was not thoroughly conversant with the terminology of the people, but it flashed upon me what he meant.
"Did you wish to see the priest?" I rejoined.
"Aye," replied the old vagrant—for so I deemed him. The smile seemed stereotyped, for it never faded. His face, when one regarded it attentively, had a quite attractive pleasantness.
"I'm sorry to say he's out just now," I said. "But you may go round to the back and get something to eat, if you wish."
It struck me as strange that he did not ask for money, but thanked me profusely and politely, as he touched his wretched hat once more and shuffled off toward the kitchen quarters.