which fully atoned for the commonness of the features. The right eye
turned away from the left, in that watchful squint which seems
constructed on the same considerate plan as those Irish guns, made for
shooting round a corner; his eye-brows were large and shaggy, and greatly
resembled bramble bushes, in which his fox-like eyes had taken refuge.
Round these vulpine retreats were a labyrinthean maze of those wrinkles,
vulgarly called crow's-feet;--deep, intricate, and intersected, they
seemed for all the world like the web of a chancery suit. Singular
enough, the rest of the countenance was perfectly smooth and unindented;
even the lines from the nostril to the corners of the mouth, usually so
deeply traced in men of his age, were scarcely more apparent than in a
boy of eighteen.

His smile was frank--his voice clear and hearty--his address open, and
much superior to his apparent rank of life, claiming somewhat of
equality, yet conceding a great deal of respect; but, notwithstanding all
these certainly favourable points, there was a sly and cunning expression
in his perverse and vigilant eye and all the wrinkled demesnes in its
vicinity, that made me mistrust even while I liked my companion; perhaps,
indeed, he was too frank, too familiar, too degage, to be quite natural.
Your honest men soon buy reserve by experience. Rogues are communicative
and open, because confidence and openness cost them nothing. To finish
the description of my new acquaintance, I should observe, that there was
something in his countenance, which struck me as not wholly unfamiliar;
it was one of those which we have not, in all human probability, seen
before, and yet, which (perhaps from their very commonness) we imagine we
have encountered a hundred times.

We walked on briskly, notwithstanding the warmth of the day; in fact, the
air was so pure, the grass so green, the laughing noonday so full of the