“who is there?”
He asked me to allow him to accompany me to my study, and I did so. There was but a dim light in the passage, and it was not till he had entered my room, and the rays of my lamp had fallen upon him, that I discovered what manner of man it was that I had rashly admitted.
He was a tall, big man, with a hard, square face, and deep-set, glittering eyes, and his chin fringed with a round, shaggy beard, while he was attired in a rough pilot coat, and on his head he wore a broad-brimmed felt hat. He looked like a seafaring man, and was not a prepossessing person.
“he was a tall, big man.”
I asked him to take a seat, and seated myself in my round-backed writing chair beside my desk.
He had taken off his hat, and held it on his knee with his left hand, while the other he buried in his capacious side pocket. I thought he was going to produce something, but he did not.
He merely opened a conversation, and I may say that the tone of his voice throughout was always as quiet, as calm, as subdued, as when he addressed me at the door.
“You are Mr. Samuel Chillip?” he asked, or remarked, again.
I bowed in reply.