The boy, who sat and dreamed at the water's edge, was in his eighteenth
year or thereabouts, slenderly proportioned, and with well-cut features.
The delicately moulded chin, the sensitive nostril--these are the signs
of the poet, the dreamer, rather than of the man of action. And yet the
face was not altogether deficient in indications of strength. That heavy
line of eyebrow should mean something, as also the free up-fling of the
head when he sat erect; the final impression was of immaturity of
character rather than of the lack of it. From the merely superficial
stand-point, it may be added that he had brown eyes and hair (the latter
being cut square across his forehead and falling to his shoulders), a
good mouth containing the whitest of teeth, and a naturally light
complexion that was already beginning to accumulate its summer's coat of
tan.
He was dressed in a tunic or smock of brown linen, gathered at the waist
by a belt of greenish leather, with a buckle that shone like gold. His
knees were bare, but around his legs were wound spiral bands of
soft-dressed deer-hide. Buskins, secured by thongs of red leather and
soled with moose-hide, to prevent slipping, covered his feet, while his
head-dress consisted of a simple band of thin gold, worn fillet-wise.
This last, being purely ornamental, was doubtless a token of gentle
birth or of an assured social station. A short fur coat, made from the
pelt of the much-prized forest cat, lay in a careless heap at the boy's
feet. It had felt comfortable enough in the still keenness of the early
morning hour, but now that the sun was well up in the sky it had been
discarded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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