The glance became a fixed gaze, full of wildness and affright.
The stranger slowly entered the shade of the veranda and there halted, his features working, his form trembling. He looked weary and travel-stained. His haggard eyes spoke to the owner of the bungalow in a wild appeal.
With the peculiar movement of an automaton, the major slowly arose to his feet and came forward, his face white, his eyes dilating, a tremulous quiver on his lips.
“Don’t you know me, major?” asked the stranger wearily.
“Great heaven!” cried the major, even his lips growing white. “It is not a ghost! I am not dreaming! Have the dead come to life? It is—it is—Sir Harold Wynde!”
CHAPTER XXII.
BACK AS FROM THE DEAD.
The stranger who stood upon the veranda of Major Archer’s bungalow was tall and thin, with a haggard face, worn and sharp of feature, and full of deeply cut lines, such as a long-continued anguish never fails to graven on the features. His weary eyes were deeply sunken under his brows, and were outlined with dark circles. His hair was streaked with gray, and his long ragged beard was half gray also. His face was white like death, and unutterably wan. His garments were torn, and hung about his lank body in rags, save where they were ill-patched with bits of rags and vegetable fibres.
Was Major Archer right? Could this haggard and pitiable being be Sir Harold Wynde of Hawkhurst, one of the richest baronets in England, who was supposed to have perished in the clutches of a tiger?
It seemed incredible—impossible.
And yet when the heavy eyelids lifted from the thin white cheeks, and looked upon the major, it was Sir Harold’s soul that looked through them. They were the keen blue eyes the major remembered so well, so capable of sternness or of tenderness, so expressive of the grand and noble soul, the pure and lofty character, which had distinguished the baronet.