Half-way up the east, the moon, now in her last quarter and decrepit, climbed with the dawn close at her heels.  And at this hour they brought in the Stranger, asking if my pleasure were to give him clothing and hospitality.

Nobody knew whence he came—­except that it was from the wind and the night—­seeing that he spoke in a strange tongue, moaning and making a sound like the twittering of birds in a chimney.  But his journey must have been long and painful; for his legs bent under him, and he could not stand when they lifted him.  So, finding it useless to question him for the time, I learnt from the servants all they had to tell—­namely, that they had come upon him, but a few minutes before, lying on his face within my grounds, without staff or scrip, bareheaded, spent, and crying feebly for succour in his foreign tongue; and that in pity they had carried him in and brought him to me.

Now for the look of this man, he seemed a century old, being bald, extremely wrinkled, with wide hollows where the teeth should be, and the flesh hanging loose and flaccid on his cheek-bones; and what colour he had could have come only from exposure to that bitter night.  But his eyes chiefly spoke of his extreme age.  They were blue and deep, and filled with the wisdom of years; and when he turned them in my direction they appeared to look through me, beyond me, and back upon centuries of sorrow and the slow endurance of man, as if his immediate misfortune were but an inconsiderable item in a long list.  They frightened me.  Perhaps they conveyed a warning of that which I was to endure at their owner’s hands.  From compassion, I ordered the servants to take him to my wife, with word that I wished her to set food before him, and see that it passed his lips.

So much I did for this Stranger.  Now learn how he rewarded me.

He has taken my youth from me, and the most of my substance, and the love of my wife.

From the hour when he tasted food in my house, he sat there without hint of going.  Whether from design, or because age and his sufferings had really palsied him, he came back tediously to life and warmth, nor for many days professed himself able to stand erect.  Meanwhile he lived on the best of our hospitality.  My wife tended him, and my servants ran at his bidding; for he managed early to make them understand scraps of his language, though slow in acquiring ours—­I believe out of calculation, lest someone should inquire his business (which was a mystery) or hint at his departure.  I myself often visited the room he had appropriated, and would sit for an hour watching those fathomless eyes while I tried to make head or tail of his discourse.  When we were alone, my wife and I used to speculate at times on his probable profession.  Was he a merchant?—­an aged mariner?—­a tinker, tailor, beggarman, thief?  We could never decide, and he never disclosed.