If some poacher or Indian were fooling about the back land, Uncle John would wish to know. Reuben slipped from the rock with no sound, and wormed a gradual way through the brush. Someone sneezed. Poachers try not to sneeze; prowling Indians just don't; still Reuben maintained his caution because of a wild-animal pleasure in it. Having stolen by degrees to the edge of the clearing, he observed the stout bowed back and lightly fringed bald head of a man kneeling by a shallow pond, parting the dead grass to stare down into the water. Surely not a poacher examining a trap; the man was familiar somehow. Reuben identified him, but doubtfully. Acting on an impulse of gentle wickedness, he slid out from the bushes and sat cross-legged with his chin in his hands, all as quietly as a mouse crossing a heap of flour. Rising at last from his peculiar inspection of the pond water, the man sneezed again. He turned unknowing, and jumped delightfully. He said "God bless me!" and closed his large mouth two or three times while a slow chuckle shook him from fringed head to dingy shoes--a memorably ugly man pitted with smallpox scars from a button chin to a bulging forehead. His clothes were snuff-stained; respectable once, now a second best suited to the woods. His little dark eyes gleamed mirthful and sad, intent. A ribbony nose ended in a flared tip with a double knob. Reuben marveled that having known this face at his bedside, and that not long ago, he could have been confused in remembering it. "I'm sorry, sir--didn't go for to startle you, Mr. Welland." "Oh, didn't you!" "It was the wig." "The wig, sir? Oh, you mean the absence of my wig. I'm in a manner disguised. I understand your synecdoche, or do I mean hypallage?" "Metonymy," said Reuben. "Brrr!" said Amadeus Welland. "Mm-yas, of course, 'tis the spotted child, the younger one. How's your brother, Mr. Cory?" "Well," said Reuben, and laughed happily for no plain reason. Sighing and grunting as the elderly do, the little man sat on the ground, not too ungracefully in spite of stooped plumpness and a modest melon of potbelly. His darkened snuff-stained hands were firm, not very wrinkled; he might be less ancient than he seemed. "Ah, the wig! The structure! I employ it, you understand, for medical purposes. Wondrous therapeutic--I dare venture you and your brother were so frightened by it that you were forced to recover in spite of the worst my simples could do. Yet plainly no one in his right mind could dwell in such a thing, let alone go for a walk in the woods." "I can see that, sir."