"this makes it stranger.
Who journeyed with you?"

"A man,--a nice, strange, oldish fellow in a fur coat." And the young
man wished to enter upon a narrative, when the doctor interrupted him.

"You're not well enough to talk much now. Tell me to-morrow all about
it."

The doctor returned home, his imagination occupied with the vision of a
train rushing at express speed over the metals, and of a compartment in
the train in which a young man reclined under the spell of an old man.
The young man's face he saw clearly, but the old man's evaded him like a
dream, and yet he felt he ought to know one who knew the peculiar repute
of the St. James's Hospital. Next day the young man told his story,
which was in effect as follows: He was a subaltern in a dragoon regiment
stationed in Brighton. On Sunday afternoon he had set out for London on
several days' leave. He had taken a seat in a smoking-carriage, and was
preparing to make himself comfortable with a novel and a cigar, when an
elderly gentleman, who looked like a foreigner, came in as the train was
about to move. He particularly observed the man from the first, because,
though it was a pleasant spring day, he looked pinched and shrunken with
cold in his great fur overcoat, and because he had remarked him standing
on the platform and scrutinizing the passengers hurrying into the train.
The gentleman sat down in the seat opposite the young officer, and drew
his fur wrap close about him. The young officer could not keep his eyes
off him, and he noted that his features seemed worn thin and arid, as by
passage through terrific peril,--as if he had been travelling for many
days without sleep and without food, straining forward to a goal of
safety, sick both in stomach and heart,--as if he had been rushing, like
the maniac of the Gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding
none. His hair, which should have been black, looked lustreless and
bleached, and his skin seemed as if his blood had lost all colour and
generosity, as if nothing but serum flowed in his veins. His eyes alone
did not look bloodless; they were weary and extravasated, as from
anxious watching. The young officer's compassion went out to the
stranger; for he thought he must be a conspirator, fleeing probably from
the infamous tyranny of Russian rule. But presently he spoke in such
good English that the idea of his being a Russian faded away.

"Excuse the liberty I take," said he, with a singularly winni