saw his host pass
into the next room and shut the door behind him.

"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for
the shelter. "By Jove!" The stimulant filtered agreeably through him;
more charitable than any element with which he had been lately
familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones. He laid
his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over
it, his eyes closed. For hours he had shuffled about the streets to
keep from freezing. At the charity organization they gave work he was
too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he
had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it. In the
soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze. Bulstrode, if he had
stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over
thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his
appearance. He would have been quick to take note of the fine,
delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender,
emaciated body deformed by its rags.

Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious
creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful
things, was ignorant of the visitor. Finally across his mind's sharp
despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke.

A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but
another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English
asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered
senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself,
the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again
into the winter streets.

It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room
entertained his singular guest.

"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain
graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone
to-night. It's Christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or
less glad to forget it?"

The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as
the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four
hours before. Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted
him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed,
brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like
one who has been in the waters, possibly