These were fastened together with tags or
points, superseding the use of wooden skewers, with which latter mode of
suspension not a few of our country yeomen were in those days supplied.
His legs were protected by boots of fine brown Spanish leather, lined
with deer-skin, tanned with the fur on, and buttoned from the ankle to
the knee. He had gloves of the same material, reaching to the elbow when
drawn up, but now turned down with the fur outwards. The hands and feet
were remarkably small, but well shapen. A low grey cap of coarse
woollen completed the costume of this singular visitor. There was, at
times, in the expression of his eye, an indescribable mixture of
imbecility and enthusiasm, as though the spirit of some Eastern fakir
had reanimated a living body. A gleam of almost supernatural
intelligence was mingled with an expression of fatuity, that in less
enlightened ages would have invested him with the dangerous reputation
of priest or prophet in the eyes of the multitude.
Oliver Tempest led the way with great care and formality. To a keen-eyed
observer, though, his courtesy would have appeared over acted and
fulsome; but the object of his assiduities seemed to pay him little
attention, further than by a vacant smile that struggled around the
corners of his melancholy and placid mouth.
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