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It was his hair that caught my attention most, for it was thick and waving, and most singularly streaked with white. That was the more strange because the body of him looked lithe and young. It occurred to me that he might be remedying an offensive grayness as he dipped and rubbed and stooped to mirror himself the better in the bright water. But before I had made up my mind to anything further, he turned and saw me.

The first thing he did was to thrust the hand that held the herb straight down into the water with a deliberate movement—all the while holding my gaze with great fixity of purpose, as though he would not so much as let it question what he did. Presently withdrawing the hand empty, he stood up.

As he drew erect and clasped the upper part of his tunic, I saw that around his body was a sort of sash of green cloth wrapped several times, and stuck through the folds of it, various tools of the cruder sort of silversmiths. Also, though his figure was young, the skin of his face was drawn in fine wrinkles. He had a thin, high nose with a slightly mobile tip that seemed to twitch a little with distrust as he looked at me. The mouth below it was full and curved, his eyes bluish black, opaque and velvet-looking; windows out of which came and looked boldness, cunning and power, and the wistfulness of the wild creature questioning its kinship with man. All this without so much as altering a muscle of his face or removing his gaze from mine. Then he stepped back a pace against the yielding boughs, which seemed to give like doors, and received him without crackling or sensible displacement into the silence of the wood.