cheery
light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of
the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my
uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make
my host's acquaintance.

He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn
had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow
of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose
and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister
marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with
something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst.
At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it
was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from
under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this
outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all
the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.

For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a
man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one's attention. His figure
was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat
dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and
bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could
not take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But
his eyes--those peering light-blue eyes--they were the most arrestive
of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it
the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which
I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were
masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his
eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed
and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has
taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one
glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was
stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to
sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment--a
false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to
realise the look which I read in his eyes.

My uncle's welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour
or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at