“Get some brandy and milk,” said Lefevre to his companion.

“Who?  Where am I?” murmured the patient in a faint voice.

“I am Dr Lefevre, and this is St. James’s Hospital.”

“Doctor?—­hospital?—­oh, I’m dreaming!” murmured the patient.

“We’ll talk about that when you have taken some of this,” said Lefevre, as the house-physician reappeared with the nurse, bearing the brandy and milk.

Lefevre presently told him how he had been found in the train, and taken for dead till the card—­“this card,” said he, taking it from the top of the locker—­was discovered on him.  The young man listened in open amazement, and looked at the card.

“I know nothing of this!” said he.  “I never saw the card before!  I never heard your name or the hospital’s till a minute ago.”

“Your case was strange before,” said Lefevre; “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.