k!'
thinks I to myself. 'You've had your cheek laid open with a knife, my
lad, somewhere and somehow!' Struck me, then, he'd grown a beard to
hide it."

"Very likely," assented Scarterfield. "Well, and what happened? You
spoke to this man?"

"I waited and watched," continued Fish. "I'm one as has been trained
to use his eyes. Now, I see two or three little things about this man
as I remembered about Baxter. There was a way he had of chucking up
his chin--there it was! Another of playing with his watch-chain when
he talked--it was there! And of slapping his leg with his
walking-stick--that was there, too! 'Jim!' I says to my mate, 'if that
ain't a man I used to know, I'm a Dutchman!' Which, of course, I
ain't. And so, when the three of 'em sets down their glasses and turns
to the door, I jumps up and makes for my man, holding out a hand to
him, friendly. And then, of course, come all the surprise!"

"Didn't know you, I suppose?" suggested Scarterfield.

"I tell 'ee what happened," answered Fish.

"'Morning, Mr. Baxter!' says I. 'It's a long time since I had the
pleasure o' seeing you, sir!'--and as I say, shoves my hand out,
hearty. He turns and gives me a hard, keen look--not taken aback, mind
you, but searching-like. 'You're mistaken, my friend,' he says, quiet,
but pleasant. 'You're taking me for somebody else.' 'What!' says I,
all of a heap. 'Ain't you Mr. Netherfield Baxter, what I used to know
at Blyth, away up North?' 'That I'm certainly not,' says he, as cool
as the North Pole. 'Then I ax your pardon, sir,' says I, 'and all I
can say is that I never see two gentlemen so much alike in all my born
days, and hoping no offence.' 'None at all!' says he, as pleasant as
might be. 'They say everybody has a double.' And at that he gives me a
polite nod, and out he goes with his pals, and I turns back to Shanks.
'Jim!' says I. 'Don't let me ever trust my eyes and ears no more,
Jim!' I says. 'I'm a breaking-up, Jim!--that's what it is. Thinking I
sees things when I don't.' 'Stow all that!' says Jim, what's a
practical sort o' man. 'You was only mistook' says he. 'I've been in
that case more than once,' he says. 'Wherever there's a man, there's
another somewheres that's as like him as two peas is like each other;
let's go home to dinner,' he says. So we went off to the lodgings, and
at first I was sure I'd been mistaken. But later, and now--well, I
ain't. That there man was Netherfield Baxter!"

"You feel sure of it?