'Here! come in!' growled John to somebody without; 'You're a Protestant,
an't you?'
'I should think so,' replied a deep, gruff voice.
'You've the looks of it,' said John Grueby. 'I'd have known you for one,
anywhere.' With which remark he gave the visitor admission, retired, and
shut the door.
The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage,
with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes
so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to
prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size. A dingy
handkerchief twisted like a cord about his neck, left its great veins
exposed to view, and they were swollen and starting, as though with
gulping down strong passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress was of
threadbare velveteen--a faded, rusty, whitened black, like the ashes
of a pipe or a coal fire after a day's extinction; discoloured with the
soils of many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot-house odours. In
lieu of buckles at his knees, he wore unequal loops of packthread; and
in his grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of which was carved
into a rough likeness of his own vile face.
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