Yan reddened--a stranger was always an enemy; he had a natural
aversion to all such, and stared awkwardly as though caught in crime.
The man, a curious looking middle-aged person, was in shabby clothes
and wore no collar. He had a tin box strapped on his bent shoulders,
and in his hands was a long-handled net. His features, smothered in a
grizzly beard, were very prominent and rugged. They gave evidence of
intellectual force, with some severity, but his gray-blue eyes had a
kindly look.
He had on a common, unbecoming, hard felt hat, and when he raised it
to admit the pleasant breeze Yan saw that the wearer had hair like his
own--a coarse, paleolithic mane, piled on his rugged brow, like a mass
of seaweed lodged on some storm-beaten rock.
"F'what are ye fynding, my lad?" said he in tones whose gentleness was
in no way obscured by a strong Scottish tang.
Still resenting somewhat the stranger's presence, Yan said:
"I'm not finding anything; I am only trying to see what that Whistling
Lizard is like."
The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Forty years ago Ah was laying by a pool
just as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read the
riddle of the spring Peeper.
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