There was no question about his strength. As he stood in the glare of
the overhead light I could trace the muscles through his rough
homespun--for he was a mountaineer, pure and simple, and not a city-bred
thief in ready-made clothes. I saw that the bulging muscles of his
calves had driven the wrinkles of his butternut trousers close up under
the knee-joint and that those of his thighs had rounded out the coarse
cloth from the knee to the hip. The spread of his shoulders had
performed a like service for his shirt, which was stretched out of shape
over the chest and back. This was crossed by but one suspender, and was
open at the throat--a tree-trunk of a throat, with all the cords
supporting the head firmly planted in the shoulders. The arms were long
and had the curved movement of the tentacles of a devil-fish. The hands
were big and bony, the fingers knotted together with knuckles of iron.
He wore no collar nor any coat; nor did he bring one with him, so the
Warden said.
I had begun my inventory at his feet as he stood gazing sullenly at us,
his great red hands tightly clasped around the bars. When in my
inspection I passed from his open collar up his tree-trunk of a throat
to his chin, and then to his face, half-shaded by a big slouch hat,
which rested on his flaring ears, and at last looked into his eyes, a
slight shock of surprise went through me. I had been examining this wild
beast with my judgment already warped by the Warden; that's why I began
at his feet and worked up. If I had started in on an unknown subject,
prepared to rely entirely upon my own judgment, I would have begun at
his eyes and worked down. My shock of surprise was the result of this
upward process of inspection. An awakening of this kind, the awakening
to an injustice done a man we have half-understood, often comes after
years of such prejudice and misunderstanding. With me this awakening
came with my first glimpse of his eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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