Somebody was coming along the road, from that direction towards which she had been walking; that is to say he was on the way to Old Maxham. Not a tramp or a beggar. Mildred knew this at once, while he was still distant. She knew it from the quick step, the purposeful onward motion, which spoke of another class of man, though what class she could not yet conjecture.
In general outline the figure did not recall any one with whom she was acquainted in the neighbourhood; yet there was about it a curious suggestion of familiarity, as if she had known the person once upon a time, she could not recall when. She watched with a dreamy interest the gradual approach of the figure, as it came onward steadily, never swerving, nor hastening, nor slackening, but gradually increasing in apparent size as it filled a larger and larger space in her eye.
Then she began to see that it was an elderly man, or at least that he looked elderly, and that he had longish loose grey hair, curling, and falling almost to his shoulders. The kind benevolent face under his hat brought back in a flash a certain day, when she had been in the Churchyard, alone and lonely and well-nigh hopeless, and a stranger had spoken to her words of comfort.
"I thought I should see him again some day," she said to herself, and she went a step or two forward to meet him.
"How do you do?" she said, putting out her hand, with no hesitation. "We have met before, you know."
"Yes, I know," he replied pleasantly. "I remember you well,—very well indeed."
"We have only met once. It was one day in the Churchyard. You told me some truths, and made me feel how wrong I was. It did me a great deal of good. I am glad to be able to thank you for it now."
He smiled, as if recalling what had passed.
"You are Miss Pattison, who was saved last year from the shipwreck. When the Vicar behaved so gallantly, and all the other good fellows too. And your brave dog, not least of them all. Yes, yes, of course I heard all about that. The place was very full of the story when I came. And when I was here last, you were all trying hard to get enough money for a lifeboat."
"Have you been here a second time? I did not see you."