Gammon, having tossed off a glass of wine, surveyed the objects about him with curiosity.

An observer of more education would have glanced with peculiar interest at the books; several volumes lay on the table, one of them a recent work on gipsies, another dealing with the antiquities of Cornwall.

For the town traveller these things of course had no significance.

But he remarked a painting on the wall, which was probably a portrait of one of Lord Polperro's ancestors--a youngish man (the Trefoyle nose, not to be mistaken) in a strange wild costume, his head bare under a sky blackening to storm, in his hand a sort of hunting knife, and one of his feet resting on a dead wolf.

When his host reappeared Gammon asked him whom the picture represented.
"That?
That's my father--years before I was born.