As I stood, pondering on the best way of dealing with the intruder, a sudden revulsion of kindness stole over me.

For here indeed was a very different figure from what, in my first shock of surprise, I had expected to see.
No common intruder this.

In fact, who could have dreamed of coming upon so incongruous an apparition as this in an American woodland?
How on earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever saw--with his dark, smoke-dried skin, his long, straight, blue-black hair, his fine, rather ferocious brown eyes, his long, delicate French nose, his bristling black moustache and short, sting-shaped imperial.

He wore on his head a soft white felt hat, somewhat of the shape affected by circus clowns, and too small for him.

His coat was of green velveteen corduroy and he wore knickerbockers of an eloquent plaid.
He was intently absorbed in sketching a prosperous group of weeds, a crazy quilt of wildly jostling colour, that had grown up around the decay of a fallen tree, and made a fine blazon of contrast against the massed foliage in the background.