He was dressed in snuff-coloured clothes, and his legs under his knee-breeches were of a ludicrous thinness.

He shook his head at me with an air of sad wisdom, and I could read little comfort in his inhuman grey eyes.

But it was the man called Toussac who alarmed me most.

He was a colossus; bulky rather than tall, but misshapen from his excess of muscle.

His huge legs were crooked like those of a great ape; and, indeed, there was something animal about his whole appearance, something for he was bearded up to his eyes, and it was a paw rather than a hand which still clutched me by the collar.