its owner possessed in a marked degree the strongly melancholic,
emotional, and choleric temperament of his race. There was no
moroseness--no hardness in it, but rather the taciturnity that invariably
settles upon the face of those dwellers of the range who, perforce, live
much alone with their thoughts. Sheathed in mail and armed, that face
and bulky figure to some imaginations might have found its prototype in
some huge, grim, war-worn "man-at-arms" of mediaeval times. Redmond
judged him to be somewhere in his forties; forty-two was his exact age as
he ascertained later.

In curious contrast to his somewhat formidable exterior seemed his mild,
gentle, soft-brogued voice. And with speech, his taciturn face relaxed
insensibly into an almost genial expression, George noted.

Attracted by a cluster of pictures and photographs above and around the
cot in the corner opposite his own, the young fellow crossed over and
scanned them attentively. Tacked up with a random, reckless hand, the
bizarre collection was typically significant of someone's whimsical,
freakish tastes and personality. From the sublime to the ridiculous--and
worse--subjects pious and impious, dreamily-beautiful and lewdly-vulgar,
comic and tragic, also many splendid photographs were all jumbled
together on the walls in a shockingly irresponsible fashion. Many of the
pictures were unframed copies cut apparently from art and other journals;
from theatrical and comic papers.

George gazed on them awhile in utterly bewildered astonishment; then,
with a little hopeless ejaculation, swung around to the sergeant who met
his despairing grin with benign composure.

"Whose cot's--"