174 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



the moment of the flash he was occupied in the wringing 

 out of a coat that seemed strangely long for the short 

 frame upon which it had hung. The face turned tow- 

 ard us was unmistakably Irish, comical even, entirely 

 unalarming, and with the expression, blended of terror 

 and doubt, that it now wore, he might have slipped from 

 the pages of a volume of Lever that lay face down on 

 the table. The nose turned up at the tip, as if asking 

 questions of the eyes, that hid themselves between the 

 half-shut lids in order to avoid answering. The skin 

 was tanned, and yet you had a certain conviction that 

 minus the tan the man would be very pale, while the 

 iron-gray hair that topped the head crept down to form 

 small mutton-chop whiskers and an Old Country 

 throat thatch that was barely half an inch long. 



Bart touched me to caution silence, and I, seeing at 

 once that there was nothing to fear, waited develop- 

 ments. 



As soon as he could keep his eyes open against the 

 sudden glare, the little man tried to grasp the column 

 of light in his ringers, then darted out of it, and I 

 thought he had bolted from the barn ; but no, he was in- 

 stantly back again, and dilapidated as he was, he did not 

 look like a professional tramp. 



" No, yez don't fool Larry McManus agin ! Yez are a 



