Presently the little brown man withdrew his eyes from the window of the Young Doctor's office and the snowy waste beyond. They had a curious red underglow which had first come to them an evening long ago, when they caught from the sky the reflection of a burning mill. There was distance and the far thing in that underglow of his eyes. It had to do with the horizon, not with the place where his feet were. It said, "Out there, beyond, is what I go to seek, what I must find, what will be home to me."
"Well, I must be getting on," he said in a low voice to the Young Doctor, ignoring the question which had been asked.
"If you want work, there's work to be had here, as I said," responded the
Young Doctor. "You are a man of education—"
"How do you know that?" asked Jean Jacques.
"I hear you speak," answered the other, and then Jean Jacques drew himself up and threw back his head. He had ever loved appreciation, not to say flattery, and he had had very little of it lately.
"I was at Laval," he remarked with a flash of pride. "No degree, but a year there, and travel abroad—the Grand Tour, and in good style, with plenty to do it with. Oh, certainly, no thought for sous, hardly for francs! It was gold louis abroad and silver dollars at home—that was the standard."
"The dollars are much scarcer now, eh?" asked the Young Doctor quizzically.
"I should think I had just enough to pay you," said the other, bridling up suddenly; for it seemed to him the Young Doctor had become ironical and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were times when it was not easy to endure it.
The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature, and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant, because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect order of his scantily-furnished knapsack. It had the exactness of one who was set upon a far course and would carry it out on scientific calculation. He had been full of mocking quips and sallies at himself, but from first to last he never talked. The things he said were nothing more than surface sounds, as it were—the ejaculations of a mind, not its language or its meanings.
"He's had some strange history, this queer little man," said the housekeeper to the Young Doctor; "and I'd like to know what it is. Why, we don't even know his name."