"I was afraid you might be startled," he exclaimed. "I was at first, and I am neither sick nor a lady. Mother, there is a young man here who will seem like one risen from the dead to you at first sight. He looks enough like Chester Mansfield to be his twin brother. I think I never saw so striking a resemblance before, but after you are acquainted with him the impression will wear away, because he is so different in every other way." Then we went down stairs, and meeting the young man at the dining-room door, my son introduced him as "Mr. Reynolds;" and thus began my acquaintance with him. Of course, after my son's cautionary remark, I noticed him closely, but I should have done so anyhow, I am sure, for the resemblance to the dead was so strong as to give me a very strange feeling, for Chester Mansfield had been only less dear to me than my own son. But as Howard had said, the resemblance seemed to wear away somewhat as I talked with him, and I began to wonder that I had felt it so much. This young man was older, stouter--and many shades darker in complexion than my friend. His manner, speech, and style of dress were wholly unlike those of the dead Chester, although his voice, while deeper, was very similar. He was attached to the hotel in some capacity, and went out with us to dinner after a moment's talk, and I found him to be a pleasant talker, with a ready fund of the slang which seems to be the evolving language of the Far West, and a very witty use of it; but he did not seem to be well informed on any subject that I could mention, a strong contrast to the scholarship of the dead man whose face he bore. Yet he had an unmistakable air of good breeding, and even of intelligence, although it was impossible to draw him into a connected conversation. He seemed to be very popular in the house. Howard was closely engaged in his work, which sometimes kept him away for a week at a time, and I had neither the strength nor courage to go very far from the house alone, through that odd, rushing, foreign-looking town, so I had much time to myself. I was the only woman at the house except the proprietor's wife and one Irish chambermaid. This, perhaps, would account for my interest in the young man, for I must confess that he occupied my thoughts a good deal during those first weeks. One Sabbath afternoon I saw him going away with a party of friends--stylishly dressed, hard-looking men, and I turned and spoke to Howard of the idea that I had formed of him.