His hand trembled with expectation as he laid from it the awl, took from between his knees the great boot on the toe of which he had been stitching a patch, lifted the yoke of his leather apron over his head, and threw it aside.

With one hasty glance around, as if he feared some enemy lurking near to prevent his escape, he caught up a hat which looked as if it had been brushed with grease, pulled it on his head with both hands, stepped out quickly, closed the door behind him, turned the key, left it in the lock, and made straight for his earthly paradise--but with chastened step.

All Mistress Croale's customers made a point of looking decent in the street--strove, in their very consciousness, to carry the expression of being on their way to their tea, not their toddy--or if their toddy, then not that they desired it, but merely that it was their custom always of an afternoon: man had no choice--he must fill space, he must occupy himself; and if so, why not Mistress Croale's the place, and the consumption of whisky the occupation?
But alas for their would-be seeming indifference! Everybody in the lane, almost in the Widdiehill, knew every one of them, and knew him for what he was; knew that every drop of toddy he drank was to him as to a miser his counted sovereign; knew that, as the hart for the water-brooks, so thirsted his soul ever after another tumbler; that he made haste to swallow the last drops of the present, that he might behold the plenitude of the next steaming before him; that, like the miser, he always understated the amount of the treasure he had secured, because the less he acknowledged, the more he thought he could claim.
George was a tall man, of good figure, loosened and bowed.

His face was well favoured, but not a little wronged by the beard and dirt of a week, through which it gloomed haggard and white.

Beneath his projecting black brows, his eyes gleamed doubtful, as a wood-fire where white ash dims the glow.