Wiltshire Downs, lived to eighty-six, and his mother to eighty-four, and
that both were vigorous and led active lives almost to the end, he
thought it strange that his own work should be so soon done. For in
heart and mind he was still young; he did not want to rest yet.

Since that first meeting nine years have passed, and as he is actually
better in health to-day than he was then, there is good reason to hope
that his staying power will equal that of his father.

I was at first struck with the singularity of Caleb's appearance, and
later by the expression of his eyes. A very tall, big-boned, lean,
round-shouldered man, he was uncouth almost to the verge of
grotesqueness, and walked painfully with the aid of a stick, dragging
his shrunken and shortened bad leg. His head was long and narrow, and
his high forehead, long nose, long chin, and long, coarse, grey
whiskers, worn like a beard on his throat, produced a goat-like effect.
This was heightened by the ears and eyes. The big ears stood out from
his head, and owing to a peculiar bend or curl in the membrane at the
top they looked at certain angles almost pointed. The hazel eyes were
wonderfully clear, but that quality was less remarkable than the unhuman
intelligence in them--fawn-like eyes that gazed steadily at you as one
may gaze through the window, open back and front, of a house at the
landscape beyond. This peculiarity was a little disconcerting at first,
when, after making his acquaintance out of doors, I went in uninvited
and sat down with him at his own fireside. The busy old wife talked of
this and that, and hinted as politely as she knew how that I was in her
way. To her practical, peasant mind there was no sense in my being
there. "He be a stranger to we, and we be strangers to he." Caleb was
silent, and his clear eyes showed neither annoyance nor pleasure but
only their native, wild alertness, but the caste feeling is always less