ate years he has lived principally in London, and I
have seen little or nothing of him.

I have some years to pass over before I can approach to anything like
a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative. And even when that later
period is reached, the little that I have to say will not occupy your
attention for more than a few minutes.

One rainy autumn evening, while I was still practicing as a country
doctor, I was sitting alone, thinking over a case then under my charge,
which sorely perplexed me, when I heard a low knock at the door of my
room.

"Come in," I cried, looking up curiously to see who wanted me.

After a momentary delay, the lock moved, and a long, white, bony hand
stole round the door as it opened, gently pushing it over a fold in the
carpet which hindered it from working freely on the hinges. The hand
was followed by a man whose face instantly struck me with a very strange
sensation. There was something familiar to me in the look of him, and
yet it was also something that suggested the idea of change.

He quietly introduced himself as "Mr. Lorn," presented to me some
excellent professional recommendations, and proposed to fill the place,
then vacant, of my assistant. While he was speaking I noticed it as
singular that we did not appear to be meeting each other like strangers,
and that, while I was certainly startled at seeing him, he did not
appear to be at all startled at seeing me.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I thought I had met with him
before. But there was something in his face, and something in my own
recollections--I can hardly say what--which unaccountably restrained me
from speaking and which as unaccountably attracted me to him at once,
and made me feel ready and glad to accept his proposal.

He took his assistant's place on that very day. We got on together as if
we had been old friends from the first; but, throughout the whole time
of his residence in my house, he never volunteered any confidences on
the subject of his past life, and I never approached the forbidden topic
except by hints, which he resolutely refused to understand.

I had long had a notion that my patient at the inn might have been a
natural son of the elder Mr. Holliday's, and that he might also have
been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife. And now another
idea occurred to me, that Mr. Lorn was the only person in existence who
could, if he chose, enlighten me on both those doubtful points.