roportions, the skin loose and hanging, as though he had been subjected
to extraordinary pressures and tensions. It made him think vaguely of
those bladder faces blown up by the hawkers on Ludgate Hill, that change
their expression as they swell, and as they collapse emit a faint and
wailing imitation of a voice. Both face and voice suggested some such
abominable resemblance. But Cathcart long afterwards, seeking to
describe the indescribable, asserts that thus might have looked a face
and body that had been in air so rarified that, the weight of atmosphere
being removed, the entire structure threatened to fly asunder and
become--_incoherent_....

It was Hank, though all distraught and shaking with a tearing volume of
emotion he could neither handle nor understand, who brought things to a
head without much ado. He went off to a little distance from the fire,
apparently so that the light should not dazzle him too much, and shading
his eyes for a moment with both hands, shouted in a loud voice that held
anger and affection dreadfully mingled:

"You ain't Defaygo! You ain't Defaygo at all! I don't give a--damn, but
that ain't you, my ole pal of twenty years!" He glared upon the huddled
figure as though he would destroy him with his eyes. "An' if it is I'll
swab the floor of hell with a wad of cotton wool on a toothpick, s'help
me the good Gawd!" he added, with a violent fling of horror and disgust.

It was impossible to silence him. He stood there shouting like one
possessed, horrible to see, horrible to hear--_because it was the
truth_. He repeated himself in fifty different ways, each more
outlandish than the last. The woods rang with echoes. At one time it
looked as if he meant to fling himself upon "the intruder," for his hand
continually jerked towards the long hunting knife in his belt.

But in the end he did nothing, and the whole tempest completed itself
very shortly with tears. Hank's voice suddenly broke, he collapsed on
the ground, and Cathcart somehow or other persuaded him at last to go
into the tent and lie quiet. The remainder of the affair, indeed, was
witnessed by him from behind the canvas, his white and terrified face
peeping through the crack of the tent door flap.

Then Dr. Cathcart, closely followed by his nephew who so far had kept
his courage better than all of them, went up with a determined air and
stood opposite to the figure of Defago huddled over the fire. He looked
him squarely in the face