Standing on the threshold was a most extraordinary figure of a man. He was very tall and very thin, his lank garments of rusty black clinging to his skinny frame in a manner that gave him a ludicrous resemblance to a scarecrow. His face was long and pointed like a razor edge. His hooked nose curved over his thin-lipped mouth like the beak of a bird, and was of a distinctly fiery hue, especially toward the end. His long hair straggled down from under the broken brim of an ancient silk hat which had weathered the storms of many winters. His eyes were rolled piously upward so that little but the whites could be seen, while both hands were clasped over the handle of a grayish-green umbrella of extraordinary size. The Yale men gazed at him for a moment in petrified silence. “Well, who are you?” Fitzgerald inquired presently, in a choking voice. The strange man slowly withdrew his eyes from the ceiling and looked at the little fellow disapprovingly. “A rebuker of iniquity,” he returned ponderously, “moved by a direct intervention of providence to bring you to a full perception of the error of your ways.” “Humph!” snorted Fitz. “I like your cheek. What’s the matter with my ways, I’d like to know? They suit me all right.” “Confirmed in sin,” murmured the stranger. “Wallowing in profanity. A sad case—very sad.” Buckhart chuckled gleefully. “Ah-ha, Fitzy!” he grinned. “I knew you’d sure be pinched some day with your thundering cussing.” A look of pain came into the face of the tall man and he lifted one thin hand reprovingly. “Hush, I beg of you,” he said severely. “First search out your own heart and find whether it be clean before you venture to reprove a brother.” Fitzgerald chortled joyfully. “That’s right!” he exclaimed. “Go for him, old duck. Pick out your own beams, you Texas steer, before you go hunting for my moats.” Though the man’s appearance and manner were amusing enough, Dick wanted to get started with the guns, and he felt that time was being wasted. “Might I ask who you are?” he inquired, struggling to repress a smile, “and what your business here is?” The stranger glanced at him critically. “You may, sir,” he returned at length. “I am pleased to observe that you do not appear to be steeped in sin. At least, your language is not sprinkled with the oaths which have cut my sensitive nature to the quick. I am the Reverend Jeremy Pennyfeather, a preacher and expounder of the Word. On my morning ramble through the clean, sweet, dewy world, I chanced to pass this house, and finding the door ajar, I entered, seeking a moment’s rest, and, perhaps—er—a little—er—sustenance, without which these poor carnal bodies of ours cannot uphold the burdens of life.” Dick gazed at him in astonishment. He certainly did not speak as if he were quite right in the head. “Your morning ramble?” he repeated. “You live somewhere near here?” The Reverend Pennyfeather hesitated.