Ambrose silenced the dog with a command, and the man came slowly down the bank, cringing a little.
The quaintness of aspect was largely due to the fact that he wore a coat and trousers originally designed for a tall, stout man.

Ambrose suspected he had a child to deal with until he saw the wrinkles and the sophisticated eyes.
"Who are you ?" he asked.
"I Alexander Selkirk, me," was the answer.
Ambrose could not but smile at the misapplication of the sonorous Scotch name to such a manikin.
"You Ambrose Doane ?" the other said solemnly.
"Everybody seems to know me," said Ambrose.
Alexander stared at him with a sullen, walled, speculative regard, exactly, Ambrose thought, like a schoolboy facing an irate master, and wondering where the blow will fall.
To carry out this effect he was holding something inside his voluminous jacket, something that suggested contraband.
"What have you got there ?" demanded Ambrose.
Without changing a muscle of his face, Alexander undid a button and produced a gleaming black pelt.
Ambrose gasped.

It was a beautiful black fox.

Such a prize does not come a trader's way once in three seasons.

The last black fox Minot & Doane had secured brought twelve hundred dollars in London--and it was not so fine a specimen as this.
Lustrous, silky, black as anthracite; every hair in place, and not a white hair showing except the tuft at the end of the brush.
"Where did you get it ?" Ambrose asked, amazed.
"I trap him, me, myself," said Alexander.
"When ?" "Las' Februar'." "Are you offering it to me ?" asked Ambrose, eying it desirously.
"'Ow much ?" demanded Alexander, affecting a wall-eyed indifference.
Ambrose made a more careful examination.