I will try and sketch him for the reader. Guy Heavystone was then
only fifteen. His broad, deep chest, his sinewy and quivering
flank, his straight pastern, showed him to be a thoroughbred.
Perhaps he was a trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held his head
haughtily erect. His eyes were glittering but pitiless. There was
a sternness about the lower part of his face,--the old Heavystone
look,--a sternness, heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit which,
in one of his strange freaks, he wore in his mouth to curb his
occasional ferocity. His dress was well adapted to his square-set
and herculean frame. A striped knit undershirt, close-fitting
striped tights, and a few spangles set off his figure; a neat
Glengarry cap adorned his head. On it was displayed the Heavystone
crest, a cock regardant on a dunghill or, and the motto, "Devil a
better!"
I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector before the walls. I
always make it a point to think of something classical at such
times.
He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed. Something like a
smile struggled through his grim lineaments. It was like looking
on the Jungfrau after having seen Mont Blanc,--a trifle, only a
trifle less sublime and awful.
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