“But we don’t know who he is.  You let your sympathies run away with your judgment.”

“Well, little woman, let me go in and talk with him a while.  You get the lunch, and we’ll see about the rest afterward.”

So he went back and sat down again.  He was hardly seated when his visitor said: 

“If your wife objects to my staying here to-night, of course, I don’t wish to.  I don’t feel comfortable to remain where I’m not welcome.”

“Oh, you’re perfectly welcome,” said Philip, hastily, with some embarrassment, while his strange visitor went on: 

“I’m not crazy, only a little odd, you know.  Perfectly harmless.  It will be perfectly safe for you to keep me over night.”

The man spread his thin hands out before the fire, while Philip sat and watched him with a certain fascination new to his interest in all sorts and conditions of men.

Mrs. Strong brought in a substantial lunch of cold meat, bread and butter, milk and fruit, and then placed it on a table in front of the open fire, where he and his remarkable guest ate like hungry men.

It was after this lunch had been eaten and the table removed that a scene occurred which would be incredible if its reality and truthfulness did not compel us to record it as a part of the life of Philip Strong.  No one will wish to deny the power and significance of this event as it is unfolded in the movement of this story.

CHAPTER XI

“I heard your sermon this morning,’ said Philip’s guest while Mrs. Strong was removing the small table to the dining-room.

“Did you?” asked Philip, because he could not think of anything wiser to say.

“Yes,” said the strange visitor, simply.  He was so silent after saying this one word that Philip did what he never was in the habit of doing.  He always shrank back sensitively from asking for an opinion of his preaching from any one except his wife.  But now he could not help saying: 

“What did you think of it?”

“It was one of the best sermons I ever heard.  But somehow it did not sound sincere.”

“What!” exclaimed Philip, almost angrily.  If there was one thing he felt sure about, it was the sincerity of his preaching.  Then he checked his feeling, as he thought how foolish it would be to get angry at a passing tramp, who was probably a little out of his mind.  Yet the man’s remark had a strange power over him.  He tried to shake it off as he looked harder at him.  The man looked over at Philip and repeated gravely, shaking his head, “Not sincere.”

Mrs. Strong came back into the room, and Philip motioned her to sit down near him while he said, “And what makes you think I was not sincere?”

“You said the age in which we lived demanded that people live in a far simpler, less extravagant style.”

“Yes, that is what I said.  I believe it, too,” replied Philip, clasping his hands over his knee and gazing at his singular guest with earnestness.  The man’s thick, white hair glistened in the open firelight like spun glass.