looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.
“Good-night to ye,” Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments, sociable.
“Would ye hand us your name,” asks Tobin, “and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye.”
“My name,” says the man, polite, “is Friedenhausman—Maximus G. Friedenhausman.”
“’Tis the right length,” says Tobin. “Do you spell it with an ‘o’ anywhere down the stretch of it?”
“I do not,” says the man.
“Can ye spell it with an ‘o’?” inquires Tobin, turning anxious.
“If your conscience,” says the man with the nose, “is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable.”
[9]
