; the misshapen grotesqueness of the one, and the
sculpturesque comeliness of the other. It was a contrast painful to
any intelligent observer, and for the poor girl before us, about to
introduce a lover of such mold to a father of such aspect, it was like
being put to the rack.

"Mr. Devonhough, father."

"Mr. _Who?_" gasped a big voice, struggling out from smothered depths
of grossness.

"Mr. Devonhough," repeated the daughter, looking all manner of ways,
"a friend of the Rutlands."

"How does ye, Mr. Deviloh?" inquired the old farmer, in his
exceedingly countrified, agonizingly familiar manner; extending a big,
rough, red, and very filthy hand to be shaken by this exquisite sprig
of refined gentility. Mr. Devonhough, needless to mention, touched it
as gingerly as if it had been a glaringly wide awake and aggressively
disposed Cobra de Capello. He endured the ceremony in silence,
however; about as much as could be reasonably expected from one so
superbly self-controlled.

"What will father do next?" wondered the perturbed young lady, in
burning suspense. What he did was to stare unmercifully into the young
man's face, as if every separate feature was a distinct and
incomprehensible phenomenon, and, afterward, inspect him with due
carefulness, and at his very deliberate leisure, from the hat on his
head to the shoes on his feet.

Mr. Devonhough did not flinch. Some persons object to being stared at;
he did not. It is very foolish to mind such things. And besides, he
had eyes as well as this old Brobdingnagian, and knew how to use them
to quite as good a purpose. While the bellicose Creecy took in slowly
the outward manifestations of this bland young stranger, the young
stranger himself, in about two seconds and a half, had cross-examined
every constituent element in the old man's body, and thoroughly
analyzed even the marrow in his bones.

We have intimated that the old man's figure was bad; his face was a
dreadful climax to a bad figure, so marred it was by worry, so
battered by time, so travel-stained on life's rough journey, so
battle-scarred in life's hard strife. Behind this forbidding frontage,
the old man kept in store a good, sound heart; but what availed that
to his present inquisitor? A good, sound heart in an ugly body, is the
last thing a young man looks for in this world, or cares to find.

From the inspection of so much ugliness, Mr. Devonhough glanced
towards the daughter; it was merely a glan