He waited a moment for that before he spoke. In the inconsiderable interval, Alice, shaken as she was, saw the man so clearly that she could have given a fairly accurate description of him if she had never seen him thereafter. She saw that he was tall, thin and gaunt, but that his face, worn as it was, was almost the face of a boy. That must have been because of his eyes, which were deep set and wide apart, not large nor dark of colour but at once shy, kind and appealing. As he started to speak, it came to the girl that he was the very image of the man upon whom her thoughts had been dwelling from the moment of her leaving the Hollow, except that he was thinner, more worn, older (save for his eyes) and much more shabby. But gaunt as the man was, he was no ghost.
“I beg your pardon. I must have frightened you,” he murmured in a gentle, deprecatory voice which would have been exactly the right sort of voice for the dead musician and which would of itself have reassured Alice had the dusk been so deep as to veil the kindliness of his countenance.
“I was—startled,” the girl gasped. “I didn’t know—I never dreamed——”
“Of course you didn’t. It was unpardonable in me,” he declared. “But I believed the house yonder was unoccupied. There was no one there all yesterday and no light at night. I could see that there had been someone living there, but I supposed whoever it was had gone—vamoused as we say in the West. I wouldn’t however,—at least I hope I wouldn’t have tried to enter that in any case. But I know this old shop as a boy and I couldn’t resist making an attempt to get in here. Then—I got to thinking of old times and—I have walked many miles during the last week—I threw myself down on the old lounge and fell asleep.”
He raised his eyes almost ingenuously to her, for the moment a shy boy.
“I hate to think what a sad shock it must have been to you coming upon me so,” he said contritely. “You look ready to drop. Won’t you sit down? The chair over yonder by the stair railing is all right for I dusted it with my pocket handkerchief.”
“Thank you,” the girl faltered, “but——”
He understood. “Naturally you would like to get out of here right away? May I help you down? The stairway is steep and narrow and it is dark below. But perhaps you would rather go alone?”
The girl’s heart throbbed strangely.
“I should like to get out into the air,” she said. “I can get down all right, but——”