Standing well over six feet, for the presentment of vast, though perchance clumsy, gorilla-like strength, George reflected with slight awe that he had never seen the man’s equal.  His wide-spreading shoulders were more rounded than square; his deep, arching chest, powerful, stocky nether limbs and disproportionately long, huge-biceped arms seeming to fit him as an exponent of the mat rather than the gloves.  Truly a daunting figure to meet in a close-quarter, rough-and-tumble encounter! thought Redmond.  The top of his head was completely bald; his thick, straight black brows indicating that what little close-cropped iron-gray hair remained must originally have been coal-black in colour.  His Irish-blue eyes, alternately dreamy and twinklingly alert, were deeply set in a high-cheeked-boned, bronzed face, with a long upper-lipped, grimly-humorous mouth.  Its expression in repose gave subtle warning that its owner possessed in a marked degree the strongly melancholic, emotional, and choleric temperament of his race.  There was no moroseness—­no hardness in it, but rather the taciturnity that invariably settles upon the face of those dwellers of the range who, perforce, live much alone with their thoughts.  Sheathed in mail and armed, that face and bulky figure to some imaginations might have found its prototype in some huge, grim, war-worn “man-at-arms” of mediaeval times.  Redmond judged him to be somewhere in his forties; forty-two was his exact age as he ascertained later.

In curious contrast to his somewhat formidable exterior seemed his mild, gentle, soft-brogued voice.  And with speech, his taciturn face relaxed insensibly into an almost genial expression, George noted.

Attracted by a cluster of pictures and photographs above and around the cot in the corner opposite his own, the young fellow crossed over and scanned them attentively.  Tacked up with a random, reckless hand, the bizarre collection was typically significant of someone’s whimsical, freakish tastes and personality.  From the sublime to the ridiculous—­and worse—­subjects pious and impious, dreamily-beautiful and lewdly-vulgar, comic and tragic, also many splendid photographs were all jumbled together on the walls in a shockingly irresponsible fashion.  Many of the pictures were unframed copies cut apparently from art and other journals; from theatrical and comic papers.

George gazed on them awhile in utterly bewildered astonishment; then, with a little hopeless ejaculation, swung around to the sergeant who met his despairing grin with benign composure.

“Whose cot’s—­”

“’Tis Yorke’s,” said Slavin simply.  It was the first time he had mentioned that individual’s name.  He struck a match on the seat of his pants and standing with his feet apart and hands clasped behind his back smoked awhile contentedly.

“Saw ye iver th’ like av that for divarsiment?” he continued, with a wave of his pipe at the heterogeneous array, “shtudy thim! an’, by an’ large ye have th’ man himsilf.  He’s away on pay-day duty at th’ Coalmore mines west av here—­though by token, ‘tis Billy Blythe at Banff shud be doin’ ut, ‘stead av me havin’ tu sind a man from here.  He shud be back on Number Four th’ night.”