.

.

." A wooden-legged man, who had been stumping it for many hours along the high road from Plymouth, paused on the knap of the hill, mopped his dusty brow, and gazed down upon the harbour, shading his eyes.
He wore a short blue jacket with tattered white facings, a pair of white linen trousers patched at the knees, a round tarpaulin hat, a burst shoe upon his hale foot, and carried a japanned knapsack--all powdered with white dust of the road in which his wooden leg had been prodding small round holes for mile after mile.
He had halted first as his ear caught the merry chime of bells from the opposite shore.

Having mopped his brow, he moved forward and halted again by a granite cross and drinking-trough whence the road led steeply downhill between the first houses of the village.

He was visibly agitated.