tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six feet in
height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout. There was something at
once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.

He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a soft
frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was looped
round his neck and fastened to his fob. His heavy cheeks had folds
in them like those in a bloodhound's face. He wore big, drooping,
yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking, and a goatee
beard. He had long loose ears that might almost have been said to gap.
On his head there was a soft black hat, large in the brim and low in
the crown. His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled under their bushy brows
with a queer, kind cynicism. As a young man he had sown many a wild
oat; but he had also worked and made money in business; he had, in fact,
burned the candle at both ends; but he had never been unready to do
his fellows a good turn. He had a passion for driving, and his reckless
method of pursuing this art had caused him to be nicknamed: "The
notorious Treffry."

Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."

"Just so," Treffry had answered. At the bottom of the hill they had gone
over a wall into a potato patch. Treffry had broken several ribs; his
friend had gone unharmed.

He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together with
the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar phrases, made