As I entered the poor kitchen of the inn--for it was a sorry shed altogether--there rose to meet me a figure which, if I live to Methuselah's age, I shall not easily forget. He was tall and had the limbs of a giant. His hair was tawny and inclined to red, and hung in disorderly waves on his shoulders. His raiment--for he had flung his scholar's cap and robe to a corner of the room--was poor and ragged, and seemed scarcely to hang together on his brawny back. His arms were long and nervous, and the hands at the end of them twitched uneasily even while the rest of his body was motionless. His carriage was erect and martial, and you knew not whether to admire most the weight and solidity of the man as he stood still, or the tiger-like spring in every limb when he moved. Yet it was not one of these things which made me stand almost in awe as I saw him. It was his face, which, if ever a man's face deserved the name, was beautiful. I cannot explain why; for I have seen features more finely carved and better proportioned in faces which never seemed to me so beautiful as his. I have seen more strength of mouth, more light of eyes, many a time, and yet never looked twice; I have seen faces as noble which never struck me as his did. I know not how it was. I think it was the expression which moulded all his face into a look, partly wild, partly noble, partly sad, and wholly gentle. For as you watched it, it changed like an April day from cloud to fair, from thunder to lightning, from night to day; yet whatever came or went, the look of a gentle man remained. Man, did I say? He was scarcely my senior, even if he was my equal in years; and his beardless chin and the boyish glow on his cheek made him seem younger than he was. But why all this picture-drawing of a stray Oxford student, whom, while I talk about him, I keep standing in front of me on the floor of that poor kitchen? You shall hear. It was not to do me obeisance that he rose as I entered. His dirk was drawn and his face was thunderous as he took a step forward and spoke. "I want you not! So leave me." My Lord Burleigh himself could not have spoken the words more royally, although he would have spoken them with less music and more of an English accent in his voice. Now, moved as I was by the look of my companion, it offended me to hear a loyal London 'prentice talked to thus like a dog, or, worse, like the drawer of the inn. "By your leave," said I, and it was not often I said as much to any man, "unless you be the landlord of the place, I have as good a right to be here as you."