n nose, and immediately below that a moustache, and a
thick short beard of curly light-brown hair. A slight, very slight,
feeling of regret mingled with the astonishment with which March passed
from the contemplation of the soft blue eyes to the bushy beard. He
also noted that the stranger wore a little leathern cap, and that a
profusion of rich brown hair descended from his head to his shoulders.

"Ye're better, lad," said the owner of the blue eyes in that deep
musical bass voice which one meets with but rarely, and which resembles
strongly, at times, the low pipes of a cathedral organ.

"Thankee, yes, I'm--"

"There, don't move yet awhile. You're badly bruised, lad. I'll go
fetch ye another drop o' water."

The owner of the blue eyes rose as he spoke, laid March's head softly on
the ground, and walked towards a neighbouring brook. In doing so he
displayed to the wondering gaze of March the proportions of a truly
splendid-looking man. He was considerably above six feet in height, but
it was not that so much as the herculean build of his chest and
shoulders that struck March with surprise. His costume was the ordinary
leather hunting-shirt and leggings of a backwoodsman, and, although
deeply bronzed, his colour not less than his blue eyes and brown hair
told that he was not an Indian.

As he returned, carrying a little birch-bark dish full of water in his
hand, March observed that the lines of his forehead indicated a mingled
feeling of anger and sadness, and that his heavy brows frowned somewhat.
He also noted more clearly now the man's towering height, and the
enormous breadth of his chest. As he lay there on his back with his
head pillowed on a tuft of moss, he said inwardly to himself, "I never
saw such a fellow as this before in all my life!"

And little wonder that March Marston thought thus, for, as no doubt the
reader has already guessed, the far-famed Wild Man of the West himself
stood before him!

But he did not know him. On the only occasion on which he had had an
opportunity of beholding this renowned man, March had been rendered
insensible just as he came on the field, and the exaggerated
descriptions he had heard of him seemed quite irreconcilable with the
soft blue eye and gentle manner of the hunter who had come thus
opportunely to his aid. For one moment, indeed, the idea did occur to
March that this was the Wild Man. It was natural that, having had his
thoughts for so long a period