For here Tom Bowles had thrown down his pipe and was coming slowly
across the road towards them.

Kenelm eyed him with attention. A singularly powerful man, not so
tall as Kenelm by some inches, but still above the middle height,
herculean shoulders and chest, the lower limbs not in equal
proportion,--a sort of slouching, shambling gait. As he advanced the
moonlight fell on his face; it was a handsome one. He wore no hat,
and his hair, of a light brown, curled close. His face was
fresh-coloured, with aquiline features; his age apparently about six
or seven and twenty. Coming nearer and nearer, whatever favourable
impression the first glance at his physiognomy might have made on
Kenelm was dispelled, for the expression of his face changed and
became fierce and lowering.

Kenelm was still walking on, Jessie by his side, when Bowles rudely
thrust himself between them, and seizing the girl's arm with one hand,
he turned his face full on Kenelm, with a menacing wave of the other
hand, and said in a deep burly voice,

"Who be you?"

"Let go that young woman before I tell you."

"If you weren't a stranger," answered Bowles, seeming as if he tried
to suppress a rising fit of wrath, "you'd be in the kennel for those
words. But I s'pose you don't know that I'm Tom Bowles, and I don't
choose the girl as I'm after to keep company with any other man. So
you be off."