His clothes were the remnants of old finery, well cut and of good stuff, but patched and threadbare.

He wore a sword, and carried a stout rustic staff.

The weather was warm for October, and the man had been walking fast, for, as he peered through the autumn brume into the dark entry, he mopped his face with a dirty handkerchief.
The exercise had brought back his ailment and he shivered violently.
Punctually as autumn came round he had these fevers, the legacy of a year once spent in the Pisan marshes.

He had doped himself with Jesuits' powder got from a woman of Madame Carwell's, so that he was half deaf and blind.

Yet in spite of the drug the fever went on burning.
But to anyone looking close it would have seemed that he had more to trouble him than a malarial bout.