he had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped eyes on him. though a wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. he might even have done for his man, supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. on the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting unmistakable mugs, dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner hesperus and etcetera. and when all was said and done, the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
mind you, i'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed. analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. giants, though, that is rather a far cry you see once in a way. marcella, the midget queen. in those waxworks in henry street i myself saw some aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged. they couldn't straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline, the sinews, or whatever you like to call them, behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods. there's an example again of simple souls.