, cloudy morning, hidden
under his shocking old black tarpaulin hat, hoeing potatoes among the
lava. So warped and crooked was his strange nature, that the very handle
of his hoe seemed gradually to have shrunk and twisted in his grasp,
being a wretched bent stick, elbowed more like a savage's war-sickle
than a civilized hoe-handle. It was his mysterious custom upon a first
encounter with a stranger ever to present his back; possibly, because
that was his better side, since it revealed the least. If the encounter
chanced in his garden, as it sometimes did--the new-landed strangers
going from the sea-side straight through the gorge, to hunt up the queer
green-grocer reported doing business here--Oberlus for a time hoed on,
unmindful of all greeting, jovial or bland; as the curious stranger
would turn to face him, the recluse, hoe in hand, as diligently would
avert himself; bowed over, and sullenly revolving round his murphy hill.
Thus far for hoeing. When planting, his whole aspect and all his
gestures were so malevolently and uselessly sinister and secret, that he
seemed rather in act of dropping poison into wells than potatoes into
soil. But among his lesser and more harmless marvels was an idea he ever
had, that his visitors came equally as well led by longings to behold
the mighty hermit Oberlus in his royal state of solitude, as simply, to
obtain potatoes, or find whatever company might be upon a barren isle.
It seems incredible that such a being should possess such vanity; a
misanthrope be conceited; but he really had his notion; and upon the
strength of it, often gave himself amusing airs to captains. But after
all, this is somewhat of a piece with the well-known eccentricity of
some convicts, proud of that very hatefulness which makes them
notorious. At other times, another unaccountable whim would seize him,
and he would long dodge advancing strangers round the clinkered corners
of his hut; sometimes like a stealthy bear, he would slink through the
withered thickets up the mountains, and refuse to see the human face.

Except his occasional visitors from the sea, for a long period, the only
companions of Oberlus were the crawling tortoises; and he seemed more
than degraded to their level, having no desires for a time beyond
theirs, unless it were for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But
sufficiently debased as he appeared, there yet lurked in him, only
awaiting occasion for discovery, a still further pronenes