Once or twice he stopped, as though the climb were too
much for him, but at last he made his way to our door and
entered. His appearance corresponded to the sounds which we
had heard. He was an aged man, clad in seafaring garb, with an
old pea-jacket buttoned up to his throat. His back was bowed
his knees were shaky, and his breathing was painfully asthmatic.
As he leaned upon a thick oaken cudgel his shoulders heaved in
the effort to draw the air into his lungs. He had a coloured scarf
round his chin, and I could see little of his face save a pair of
keen dark eyes, overhung by bushy white brows and long gray
side-whiskers. Altogether he gave me the impression of a re-
spectable master mariner who had fallen into years and poverty.
"What is it, my man?" I asked.
He looked about him in the slow methodical fashion of old
age.
"Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?" said he.
"No; but I am acting for him. You can tell me any message
you have for him."
"It was to him himself I was to tell it," said he.
"But I tell you that I am acting for him. Was it about
Mordecai Smith's boat?''
"Yes. I knows well where it is. An' I knows where the men
he is after are. An' I knows where the treasure is. I knows all
about it."
"Then tell me, and I shall let him know."
"It was to him I was to tell it," he repeated with the petulant
obstinacy of a very old man.
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