And after a clinking of glasses and the trampling of great boots on the stairs, an immense man came in. His face was a riot of health. His eyes shone blue and kindly under a huge fleece of curly black hair. There was red in his cheeks, and his lips were full and scarlet. His hand and arm were those of a prizefighter. He came in smiling, bringing with him such an odour of strong waters and pipe tobacco that, between laughing and coughing, I thought the old fellow would have choked. Indeed, I made a step forward to pat the back of his dressing-gown of flannel, and if Mary Lyon had been there, I am sure nothing would have stopped her from doing it. Even when he had a little recovered, he still stood hiccoughing with the tears in his eyes, and calling out with curious squirms of inward laughter, "Dick, lad, this will never do. Thou art under watch and ward down at the pirn-mill of Marnhoul! And it was a wench that did it. Often have I warned thee, Dick! Two pistols thou hadst in a black bag. Dick--for shame, Dick--for shame, thus to fright a decent woman! And her son, Rob (I think you said was the name of him), did trample the very life out of you--which served you well and right, Dickie! Oh, Dickie, for shame!" The big man stood looking from one to the other of us, with a kind of comical despair, when, hearing through the open door between the old gentleman's room and his own, the sounds of a noisy irruption and the clinking of glasses beginning again, he went back, and with a torrent of rough words drove the roysterers forth, shutting and locking the door after them. Then he came strolling back, leaned his arm on the mantelpiece, and bade my grandfather tell him all about it. I can see him yet, this huge ruddy man, spreading himself by the fireplace, taking up most of the room with his person, while he of the flannel dressing-gown wandered about _tee-heeing_ with laughter--and, round one side or the other, or between the legs of the Colossus, making an occasional feeble poke at the fire. It was curious also to see how my grandfather's serene simplicity of manner and speech compelled belief. I am sure that at first the big man Dick had nothing in his mind but turning us out into the street as he had done the roysterers. But as William Lyon went on, his bright eye grew more thoughtful, and when my grandfather handed him the slip with the name of Mr. Wringham Pollixfen Poole upon it, he absolutely broke into a hurricane of laughter, which, however, sounded to me not a little forced and hollow--though he slapped his leg so loud and hard that the little man in the dressing-gown stopped open-mouthed and dropped his poker on the floor. "It seems to me," he cried shrilly, "that if you hit yourself like that, Dick Poole, you will split your buckskin breeches, which appear to be new." But the big man took not the least notice. He only stared at the scrap of paper, and then started to laugh again.