they might be driven about in burning sunshine,
shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged Modreds bearing the
blankest of shields.

Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the
personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.

A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling at the ends,
dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like those that were imposed
upon the West some years ago by self-appointed "divine healers" who
succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture appeared to be kind
of gunny-sacking, cut and made into a garment that would have made the
fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped fingers, delicate
nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the class of hermits
who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their caves in spots
indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall above.

The hermit's home was not altogether a cave. The cave was an addition
to the hermitage, which was a rude hut made of poles daubed with clay
and covered with the best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing.

In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a rustic bookcase
made of unplaned poplar planks, and a table formed of a wooden slab laid
across two upright pieces of granite--something between the furniture of
a Druid temple and that of a Broadway beefsteak dungeon. Hung against
the walls were skins of wild animals purchased in the vicinity of Eighth
Street and University Place, New York.

The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the hermit cooked his
meals on a rude stone hearth. With infinite patience and an old axe he
had chopped natural shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood his stores
of flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking-powder, soda-mint
tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo Emulsion for chaps and roughness
of the hands and face.

The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was an asset of the
Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was second in interest only to the
Mysterious Echo in the Haunted Glen. And the Lover's Leap beat him only
a few inches, flat-footed. He was known far (but not very wide, on
account of the topography) as a scholar of brilliant intellect who had
forsworn the world because he had been jilted in a love affair. Every
Saturday night the Viewpoint Inn sent to him surreptitiously a basket
of provisions. He never left the immediate outskirts of his hermitage.
Guests of the inn who visited him s