misled by the shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given
name--Orson--into the notion that he was a mighty hunter, with the
fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. The hirsute and grisly sound of Orson expresses only his
entire affinity with the untamed and the natural, an uncouth but gentle
passion for the freedom and wildness of the forest. Orson Phelps has
only those unconventional and humorous qualities of the bear which
make the animal so beloved in literature; and one does not think of Old
Phelps so much as a lover of nature,--to use the sentimental slang of
the period,--as a part of nature itself.

His appearance at the time when as a "guide" he began to come into
public notice fostered this impression,--a sturdy figure with long body
and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-colored trousers
repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surmounted by a limp,
light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top, so that his yellowish hair
grew out of it like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair was
long and tangled, matted now many years past the possibility of being
entered by a comb.

His features were small and delicate, and set in the frame of a reddish
beard, the razor having mowed away a clearing about the sensitive mouth,
which was not seldom wreathed with a childlike and charming smile.
Out of this hirsute environment looked the small gray eyes, set near
together; eyes keen to observe, and quick to express change of thought;
eyes that made you believe instinct can grow into philosophic judgment.
His feet and hands were of aristocratic smallness, although the latter
were not worn away by ablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to
give you the impression that here was a man who had just come out of
the ground,--a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially
explained by his humorous relation to-soap. "Soap is a thing," he said,
"that I hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been
put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago.
The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this
realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to
refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had
supplied the place of our artificial breeding to this man?

Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on a log, with a
short pipe in his mouth. If ever man