It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked out faithfully, and so made visible.  Figure to yourself one with the fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful, springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round, well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you unpleasantly of the rattlesnake’s look, wary, deadly, and ready to strike.  When he thought, his forehead wrinkled.  His lips shut upon each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust forward with the effect as of balled fists.  One ear was slightly larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the lobe.  In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.  It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant tiptiltedness of a child’s.  It was the sort of nose which should have complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter.  It looked lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and throat lent a more sinister note.

We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet encountered.

For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor, sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed only such nursing as he was sure to get.

“One does one’s duty as one finds it, of course,” said the big doctor, looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his head.  “Yes, yes, yes, one must do what’s right, on the face of it, come what will.  There’s no getting around that!” He glanced at me, a shadow in his kind gray eyes.  “But there are times, my friend, when I wonder!  Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife’s got to die.  There’s no help and no hope—­she’s got to die, and she a mother of young children.  So I have to try desperately,” said the doctor, rubbing his nose, “to cling tooth and claw to the hope that there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of things—­sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things—­and uses them always for some beneficent purpose.  But in the meantime the mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and against his will, because it had to be and we couldn’t do anything else!  Now, why?  I can’t help but wonder!”

We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow.  And I wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer.  I was startled and alarmed beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual type,—­not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.