But who was he in the midst of all this strange assortment? Was he the owner of this wild, lonely dwelling? Oh no, it was a young man dressed as none could be dressed who frequented not very different scenes from those that lay around him. His clothes were not only those of a gentleman, but those of a gentleman who thought much of his own personal appearance--too much indeed to be perfectly gentlemanly. All that the tailor, the boot-maker, the hat-maker could do had been done to render the costume correct according to the fashion of the day; but there was a certain something which may be called a too-smartness about it all; the colours were too bright, the cut too decidedly fashionable, to be quite in good taste. Neither was the arrangement of the hues altogether harmonious. There are the same colours in a China-aster and a rose, but yet what a difference in the appearance of the two flowers; and the same sort of difference, though not to the same extent, existed between the dress of the person before us, and that of the truly well-dressed man even of his own time. In most other respects his appearance was good; he was tall, rather slightly formed than otherwise, and had none of that stiffness and rigidity which might have been anticipated from his apparel. Demeanour is almost always tinged more or less by character, and a wild, rash, vehement disposition will, as in his case, give a freedom to the movements which no drilling can altogether do away with. His features in themselves were not bad. There was a good high forehead, somewhat narrow indeed, a rather fine pair of eyes (if one could have seen them both), a little close together, a well-formed nose, and a mouth and chin not badly cut, though there was a good deal of animal in the one, and the other was somewhat too prominent. The whole countenance, however, was disfigured by a black silk shade which covered the right eye, and a fresh scar all the way down the same side of the nose, while from underneath the shade, which was not large enough for its purpose, peeped out sundry rainbow rings of blue and yellow, invading both the cheek and the temple.
By these marks the reader has already perceived that this gentleman has been presented to him before, but in a very different garb, which he had thought fit to assume for his own particular purposes on the preceding night, and now he sat in the cottage of Stephen Gimlet the poacher, judging it expedient to keep himself at a distance from the peopled haunts of man, during the bright and bustling day at least. At night he proposed to betake himself to the inn which had been mentioned in his conversation with the housekeeper; but after his pleasant and hopeful conversation with his father, he had ridden straight to the dwelling of his companion, Wolf, where on the preceding day his portmantles had been left after they had arranged their plans; and having stabled his horse in a shed at the back of the building, had passed the heavy hours of darkness partly in bitter meditations, and partly in conversation with his comrade. Sleep could hardly be said to have visited his eyelids, for though after he cast himself down to rest he had dozed from time to time, yet agitating thoughts continually returned and deprived him of all real repose.