on the chair again by the fire. "I didn't know, sir,"
she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed.

"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then
at her again.

"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried
his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head
and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his
napkin was still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she
closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise
and perplexity. "I _never_," she whispered. "There!" She went quite
softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what
she was messing about with _now_, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and
resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the
window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette
in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to
the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This
left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier
air to the table and his meal.

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said
Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!"

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended
the traveller's coat upon this. "And they goggles! Why, he looked
more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler
on a corner of the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his
mouth all the time. Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was
hurt too--maybe."

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul
alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them
taters _yet_, Millie?"

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea
that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident
she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking
a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened
the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to
put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner
with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and
drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive
brevity than