One September midnight, as he stirred a late supper over a small wood-fire, he was hailed by a cry from above. “Ho, you! I ask shelter,” he was adjured. The quarter moon showed him a slim figure dark against the sky. “Come down, and you shall have it,” he answered, and continued to skim his broth. The descent was painfully made, and it was long before the traveller stood blinking by his fire--a gaunt and hollow-eyed lad. Senhouse took him in at a glance, stained, out-at-elbows with the world, nursing a grudge, footsore and heartsore. He had a gypsy look, and yet had not a gypsy serenity. That is a race that is never angry at random; and never bitter at large. A gypsy will want a man's life; but if the man is not before him, will be content to wait until he is. But this wanderer seemed to have a quarrel with time and place, that they held not his enemy by the gullet. “You travel late, my friend,” said Senhouse briskly. “I travel by night,” said the stranger, “lest I should be seen by men or the sun.” Senhouse laughed. “_In girum imus noctu, non ut consumimur igni_.' They used to say that of the devils once upon a time. Devilish bad Latin; but it reads backwards as well as forwards, like the devil himself.” “My devil rides on my back,” said the stranger, “and carries with him the fire that roasts me.” He was at once bitter and sententious. Senhouse put down his hurts to bruises of the self-esteem. “I hope that you dropped him up above,” he said cheerfully, “or that you will let me exorcise him. I've tried my hand with most kinds of devil. Are you a Roman?” “Half,” he was told, and, guessing which half, asked no more questions. “You are pretty well done, I can see,” he said. “You want more food. You want warm water, and a bed, and a dressing for your feet. You've been on the road too long.” The stranger was huddled by the fire, probing his wounded feet. “I'm cut to pieces,” he said. “I've been over stubbles and flint. This is a cruel country.” “It's the sweetest in the world,” Senhouse told him, “when you know your way about it. When you have the hang of it you need not touch the roads. You smell out the hedgerows, and every borstal leads you out on to the grass. But I'll own that there are thistles. I wear sandals myself. Now,” he continued, ladling out of his pot with a wooden spoon, “here's your porridge, and there are bread and salt; and here water, and here goat's milk. Afterwards you shall have a pipe of tobacco, and some tea. Best begin while all's hot--and while you eat I'll look to your wounds. Finally, you shall be washed and clothed.”