Anyhow, after the previous hour or two of tensity, it was a relief to be face to face with my man, I able to read his, if I could, he able to read mine. It was only in the grey half-light of his hole in the rocks, but, at least, we should look each other in the eyes, as men wish to do when they are acting honestly towards each other, even if later they must fight. You are quick, at a drawn moment, to seize the picture of a man, to sound his being, and the Black Colonel, as he stood there courteously attentive, intelligently alert, made a picture which vouchsafed a clear personality. He would have been something ripely over thirty, but ten years of adventure and philandering sat lightly on him, and he looked even younger than he was. A dark man keeps the freshness of youth well, until it begins to go in the greying of his hair, when it goes quickly; while a fair man grows middle-aged soon, but fends off old age well, or, at all events, the look of it. The Black Colonel was dark entirely; dark of skin, or rather olive, as you find men and women among a Celtic people; dark of eye to the point of a scowl, behind which, however, there was a well of mirth; dark of hair and dark of beard. His hair he wore long, not being always within reach of scissors, and his beard had that silky texture which comes of never having known a razor. Once, as the story went, he asked Red Murdo, so-called for sundry reasons besides his tousled red hair, to shave him with the sharp edge of a dirk. The experiment began so ill that it never actually began at all, and the Black Colonel had a virgin beard in which he took a due conceit--why not? He thought it manly, where, perhaps he was right, and he had learned in France that women thought it manly, so he was doubly right. The Celts, wherever found, are not generally tall, and the Black Colonel was a pure Celt in body as well as in nature. He was upstanding, bore himself easily, was clean in line and tough of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood the test admirably. Moreover, he had that physical quality peculiar to the Celt which you might call elasticity, for it is comparable to a mountain ash which bends but does not break. There was, too, a fineness, a delicacy about him, such as proclaims a race which has dreamt dreams and lived with the wild glories of Nature. You cannot make common men of her gentlemen, and her women are music to the French chanson, "It's love that makes the world go round."