Soon the Stranger stood, bareheaded and motionless in the middle of the room. He had long white hair, good features, singularly bold and well-defined for an old man. His eyes were dark and bright and smiling. He saluted the carrier’s wife by gravely bowing.
His clothes were very quaint and old-fashioned, a long, long way behind the time. Their color was brown, all over. In his hand he carried a great brown club or walking-stick. He struck this upon the floor and it fell open and became a chair on which he sat down quite composedly.
“There!” said the carrier, turning to his wife. “That’s the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as a milestone, and almost as deaf as one!”
“Sitting in the open air, John!”
“In the open air,” replied the carrier, “just at dusk. ‘Will you take me along?’ he asked, and gave me eighteen pence. Then he got into the cart. And here he is.”
“He’s going, John, I think!”
“If You Please, I was to be Left till Called For”