Trenholme went into the dark baggage-room and heard the stir against the door outside.  He went near it.  Whoever was there went on fumbling to find some way of entrance.

By this time, if Trenholme had suffered any shock of dismay, he had righted himself, as a ship rights itself after shuddering beneath a wave.  Clearly it now came within his province to find out what the creature wanted; he went back into his room and opened its outer door.

Extending beyond the wall, the flooring of the house made a little platform outside, and, as the opening of the door illuminated this, a man came quietly across the threshold with clumsy gait.  This man was no ghost.  What fear of the supernatural had gathered about Trenholme’s mind fell off from it instantly in self-scorn.  The stranger was tall and strong, dressed in workman’s light-coloured clothes, with a big, somewhat soiled bit of white cotton worn round his shoulders as a shawl.  He carried in his hand a fur cap such as Canadian farmers wear; his grey head was bare.  What was chiefly remarkable was that he passed Trenholme without seeming to see him, and stood in the middle of the room with a look of expectation.  His face, which was rugged, with a glow of weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable.

“Well?” asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluctantly he shut the door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in.  Neither of him nor of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice.

The description that had been given of old Cameron was fulfilled in the visitor; but what startled Trenholme more than this likeness, which might have been the result of mere chance, was the evidence that this man was not a person of ordinary senses and wits.  He seemed like one who had passed through some crisis, which had deprived him of much, and given him perhaps more.  It appeared probable, from his gait and air, that he was to some extent blind; but the eagerness of the eyes and the expression of the aged face were enough to suggest at once, even to an unimaginative mind, that he was looking for some vision of which he did not doubt the reality and listening for sounds which he longed to hear.  He put out a large hand and felt the table as he made his clumsy way round it.  He looked at nothing in the room but the lamp on the table where Trenholme had lately put it.  Trenholme doubted, however, if he saw it or anything else.  When he got to the other side, having wandered behind the reflector, he stopped, as if perhaps the point of light, dimly seen, had guided him so far but now was lost.