His head leaned down and forward over his chest, his hands were folded across his waist, his whole attitude was that of a man who, having eaten and drunken in the open air, has dropped off to sleep.

That he had so dropped off while in the very act of smoking was evident from the presence of a short, well-blackened clay pipe which had fallen from his lips and lay in the grass beside him.

Near the pipe, spread on a coloured handkerchief, were the remains of his dinner--Bryce's quick eye noticed fragments of bread, cheese, onions.

And close by stood one of those tin bottles in which labouring men carry their drink; its cork, tied to the neck by a piece of string, dangled against the side.

A few yards away, a mass of fallen rubbish and a shovel and wheelbarrow showed at what the sleeper had been working when his dinner-hour and time for rest had arrived.
Something unusual, something curiously noticeable--yet he could not exactly tell what--made Bryce go closer to the sleeping man.