re plain horn.

But quite independently of his poor trappings Viggo was to his comrades
an august personage. I doubt if the Grand Vizier feels more flattered
and gratified by the favor of the Sultan than little Marcus Henning did,
when Viggo condescended to be civil to him.

Marcus was small, round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, and freckle-faced.
His hair was coarse, straight, and the color of maple sirup; his nose
was broad and a little flattened at the point, and his clothes had a
knack of never fitting him. They were made to grow in and somehow he
never caught up with them, he once said, with no intention of being
funny. His father, who was Colonel Hook's nearest neighbor, kept a
modest country shop, in which you could buy anything, from dry goods and
groceries to shoes and medicines. You would have to be very ingenious to
ask for a thing which Henning could not supply. The smell in the store
carried out the same idea; for it was a mixture of all imaginable smells
under the sun.

Now, it was the chief misery of Marcus that, sleeping, as he did, in the
room behind the store, he had become so impregnated with this curious
composite smell that it followed him like an odoriferous halo, and
procured him a number of unpleasant nicknames. The principal ingredient
was salted herring; but there was also a suspicion of tarred ropes, plug
tobacco, prunes, dried codfish, and oiled tarpaulin.

It was not so much kindness of heart as respect for his own dignity
which made Viggo refrain from calling Marcus a "Muskrat" or a
"Smelling-Bottle." And yet Marcus regarded this gracious forbearance on
his part as the mark of a noble soul. He had been compelled to accept
these offensive nicknames, and, finding rebellion vain, he had finally
acquiesced in them.

He never loved to be called a "Muskrat," though he answered to the name
mechanically. But when Viggo addressed him as "base minion," in his
wrath, or as "Sergeant Henning," in his sunnier moods, Marcus felt
equally complimented by both terms, and vowed in his grateful soul
eternal allegiance and loyalty to his chief.

He bore kicks and cuffs with the same admirable equanimity; never
complained when he was thrown into a dungeon in a deserted pigsty for
breaches of discipline of which he was entirely guiltless, and trudged
uncomplainingly through rain and sleet and snow, as scout or spy, or
what-not, at the behest of his exacting commander.

It was all so very real to him that h