A tall, dark young man, with broad shoulders and a somewhat peculiar stoop in them.

His hair was black, his complexion sallow; but his features were good.

He might have been called a handsome man, but for a strange, ugly mark upon his cheek.

A very strange-looking mark indeed, quite as large as a pigeon's egg, with what looked like radii shooting from it on all sides.

Some of the villagers, talking familiarly among themselves, would call it a hedgehog, some would call it a "porkypine"; but it resembled a star as much as anything.