"With a blue cloth cap?"

"Yes, where----"

"Gray jacket and pants?"

"Yes, yes. Where?"

"With a patch on one knee?"

"Yes, the very one. When did you see him?" said Mr. Mudge, getting ready
to start his horse.

"Perhaps it isn't the one you mean," continued John, who took a
mischievous delight in playing with the evident impatience of Mr. Mudge;
"the boy that I saw looked thin, as if he hadn't had enough to eat."

Mr. Mudge winced slightly, and looked at John with some suspicion.
But John put on so innocent and artless a look that Mr. Mudge at once
dismissed the idea that there was any covert meaning in what he said.
Meanwhile Paul, from his hiding-place in the bushes, had listened with
anxiety to the foregoing colloquy. When John described his appearance so
minutely, he was seized with a sudden apprehension that the boy meant
to betray him. But he dismissed it instantly. In his own singleness of
heart he could not believe such duplicity possible. Still, it was not
without anxiety that he waited to hear what would be said next.

"Well," said Mr. Mudge, slowly, "I don't know but he is a little PEAKED.
He's been sick lately, and that's took off his flesh."