But Doctor Ludington never took his eyes off of him, more and more puzzled by the elusive likeness to one he had known somewhere in the dim past.
It would have been easy enough to ask his name, but he would not disturb him while he satisfied the ravenous cravings of nature. His sympathies were too keen and alert.
He simply paced up and down the room, too excited to remain still, and with only a languid interest in the fellow’s identity, after all, for Eva remained upper-most in his thoughts through everything.
It was a long half hour that his hungry protégé remained at table, satisfying the demands of hunger, but at last he pushed back his chair with a sigh of content, saying hoarsely:
“Thankee, stranger, I feel like a new man, ready to begin the tussle with life again. By gum, I b’lieve you have saved my life!”
“‘By gum!’ that sounds like the mountaineers of my own West Virginia. Where did you pick it up, my man?” exclaimed the young doctor, bursting into a sudden rollicking laugh.
At that laugh, that brought back echoes from somewhere in the long halls of memory, the fellow started in surprise, and for the first time looked squarely at the man who had befriended him.
What he saw was surely not enough to pale his cheek, reddened with the generous warmth of the wine, or to bring that startled, furtive gleam into the stealthy eyes beneath the thick overhanging brows.
He only saw one of nature’s noblemen in soul as well as form; tall, erect, handsome, with a princely air that would have been as conspicuous in poor attire as in his elegant evening suit, covered by the long, fur-lined overcoat.
Yet one look startled the gazer, and the second made him get up and hustle toward the door, muttering: