He hammers away upon
his one topic as lustily as ever he did upon a horseshoe! Do you
know such a person?" I shook my head, and was turning away. "Our
friend," he continued, "is described to me as a brawny, shaggy, grim,
and ill-favored personage, not particularly well calculated, one
would say, to insinuate himself with the softer sex. Yet, so far has
this honest fellow succeeded with one lady whom we wot of, that he
anticipates, from her abundant resources, the necessary funds for
realizing his plan in brick and mortar!"
Here the stranger seemed to be so much amused with his sketch of
Hollingsworth's character and purposes, that he burst into a fit of
merriment, of the same nature as the brief, metallic laugh already
alluded to, but immensely prolonged and enlarged. In the excess of
his delight, he opened his mouth wide, and disclosed a gold band
around the upper part of his teeth, thereby making it apparent that
every one of his brilliant grinders and incisors was a sham. This
discovery affected me very oddly.
I felt as if the whole man were a moral and physical humbug; his
wonderful beauty of face, for aught I knew, might be removable like a
mask; and, tall and comely as his figure looked, he was perhaps but a
wizened little elf, gray and decrepit, with nothing genuine about him
save the wicked expression of his grin. The fantasy of his spectral
character so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his
strange mirth on my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly
as himself.
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