tight-fitting breeches, in doublets that were the veriest straight-waistcoats; and the breeches, moreover, were scarlet--perhaps to delight the bulls they ploughed with. They wore their hair flowing, and their beards were long; and no man of them was ever seen without his array of arms. It quite frightened him to see them go tending the cattle with the gun on their backs, or discourse with a next-door neighbour axe in hand. "What on earth is this dangerous nonsense for, with a passionate, easily-roused people?" Taras would ask himself. And that such was their temper was shown by their very speech. In the lowlands people, as a rule, speak measuredly, in well-ordered sentences; but these men flung their notions at each other as though every statement must leave a bump or cut upon the other's head.