"He is somewhat short i' the neck and flabby of flesh," he remarked, with the air of one who was a judge of such points, "but the head is of good shape, and the eyes are clear. He is fierce enough too, o' my conscience. Here, put him back, lest he bite me! And now," he added, when the bird was restored to its prison, "what want you for the pair of them? No cozening, mind you. I will not have my master overcharged even by my own father." The barber-surgeon named the sum at which he was willing to sell the birds, and Tim at once proceeded to beat down the price to half the amount. Neither noticed in the midst of their dispute that a customer had entered the shop. "Hi there, master barber!" cried the new-comer. "Cease your wrangling, and come and cut me my hair! Dost think I am going to wait for you all night?" "Presently, your worship--presently," answered Peter, snatching up his scissors and comb. Then, turning to his son, he added: "Thy mother is laid abed with her old illness, Tim; get thee upstairs to her for awhile." Timothy obediently disappeared through the door at the back of the shop, stumbling up the stairs with noisy feet and equally noisy sword; while his father, snipping his scissors merrily in his right hand and thus making a show of being exceedingly busy, offered his customer a chair where the light from the window might fall upon him. He was a stranger to Peter Trollope, and therefore, it must be assumed, a stranger to Plymouth also. His long, untidy hair and beard, his bronzed skin, and, indeed, his whole appearance, betokened that he had newly come off the sea. His doublet, which had once been velvet, was worn threadbare; the colour, whatever it may originally have been, had suffered by the salt water, and was now an indistinct gray, stained here and there with dark-brown patches, which Peter surmised to be the stains of hardened blood. It was plain to see that the man was in some sort a warrior as well as a traveller. While the barber was spreading a white napkin about him to protect his clothing from the clippings of hair which must presently fall from the scissors, he looked into the stranger's face, and perceived that the right cheek was marred by an old wound--a long straight wound like the cut of a knife, beginning below the eye and ending somewhere in the midst of his thick black beard. "Well?" quoth the stranger, seeing that the barber hesitated to make a start. "Cut me my hair, I say."