She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a
white object disappearing behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the floor. She
rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and
put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her steel fender. She went to
these things resolutely. "I suppose I may have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial.
"Leave the hat," said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting
and looking at her.
For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.
He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with him--over the lower part of his face, so that his
mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled voice. But it was not that
which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white
bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink,
peaked nose. It was bright, pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with
a high, black, linen-lined collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance
conceivable. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a moment she
was rigid.
He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and
regarding her with his inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said, speaking very distinctly through the
white cloth.
Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the
fire. "I didn't know, sir," she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed.
"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then at her again.
"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his
white-swathed head and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his napkin was still in front
of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise
and perplexity. "I never," she whispered. "There!" She went quite softly to the kitchen, and was too
preoccupied to ask Millie what she was messing about with now, when she got there.
The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his
serviette, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another
mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to
the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a twilight. This done, he
returned with an easier air to the table and his meal.
"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did
give me, to be sure!"
She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended the traveller's coat upon this. "And they
goggles! Why, he looked more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler on a corner of
the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth
was hurt too--maybe."
She turned round, as one who suddenly r
