as to the direction from
which the voice came, and, looking up, I saw a man reclining at his
ease upon a 'possum-skin rug, which was spread on a sort of platform
set between the forked branches of a giant Australian cedar, fully
thirty feet from the ground, and higher than the chimneys of the house
near by. The man's head and face seemed to me as round and red as any
apple, and what I could see of his figure suggested at least a
comfortable tendency to stoutness. Whilst not at all the sort of
person who would be described as an old man, or even elderly, the
owner of the mysterious voice and round, red face had clearly passed
that stage at which he would be spoken of by a stranger as a young
man.

'He doesn't look a bit like a tree-climber,' I thought. The girth of
the great cedar prevented my seeing the species of ladder-stairway
which had been built against its far side. I had breakfasted as the
sun rose this fine Sunday morning, and walked no more than a couple of
miles since, so that the majority of Dursley's inhabitants had
probably not begun to think of breakfast yet. My 'arboracious'
gentleman, anyhow, was still in his pyjamas, the pattern and colouring
of which were, for that period, quite remarkably daring and bright.

'Well, young peripatater, I suppose you're wondering now if I've got a
tail, hey? No, sir, I am fundamentally innocent--virginacious, in
fact. But, all the same, if you like to just go on peripatating till
you get to my side gate, and then come straight along to this
arboracious retreat, I will a tale unfold that may appeal greatly to
your matutinatal fancy. So peri along, youngfellermelad, an' I'll come
down to meet ye.'

'All right, sir, I'll come,' I told him. And those were the first
words I spoke to him, though he seemed already to have said a good
deal to me.

By this time I had become seized with the idea that here was what is
called 'a character.' I had, as it were, caught on to the whimsical
oddity of the man, and liked it. Indeed, he would have been a
singularly dull dog who failed to recognise this man's quaint good-humour
as something jolly and kindly and well-meaning. The gentleman
spoke by the aid, not alone of his mouth, but of his small, bright,
twinkling eyes, his twitching, almost hairless brows, his hands and
shoulders, and his whole, rosy, clean-shaved, multitudinously lined,
puckered, and dimpled face. And then his words; the extraordinary
manner in which he twisted and