Oman’s anger at sight of the intruder quickly melted to pity. Kneeling beside the prostrate body, he lifted one of the limp hands and began to chafe it back to warmth. This being of no avail, he hurried to the spring, returning with a wooden vessel full of water, which he sprinkled upon the worn face and poured down the parched throat. It had its effect. The stranger stirred uneasily, muttered a few words, and suddenly opened his eyes. Oman, with a momentary throb of memory, perceived that one of these eyes was brown, and the other a faded blue. CHAPTER X THE WANDERER For a long moment Oman bent close over the intruder, staring into those strange orbs, his mind groping back, back, into the dim past, wondering where it was that he had known them before. Then, as the old man uttered a faint moan, he started to himself again, asking anxiously: “You are better? You can speak?” “I am better. Help me—to rise,” answered the other, feebly. Oman, newly compassionate, lifted the light form in his arms, carried it farther into the cave, and laid the unbidden guest upon his own grass bed in the far corner. Then he set about the tedious task of making a fire. Before his sticks were ready, however, the newcomer, summoning him, in a high and querulous voice, to the bed, gave him a flint and steel, and a piece of inflammable substance that he carried in his pouch. These Oman thankfully made use of, and presently a fire burned again in the rude habitation. Then, out of his stores, the hermit prepared a meal for both of them: rice and dried fruits, which, with fresh water, formed a repast that seemed luxurious enough in Oman’s eyes. When it was ready he approached the stranger, and asked gently if he desired to be fed. For answer the old man drew himself into a sitting posture, and then, after a moment’s effort, rose to his feet, walked to the fire, and sat down; but before Oman had placed his portion of the meal before him, he looked into the young man’s face, and said, in a harsh and trembling tone: “This is charity that you give. I cannot repay you for the shelter. I am a mendicant, old, feeble, very near to death.” “And I am a hermit. The lonely have need of little. What I possess, therefore, I will share with you.” So they began their meal. It was a silent one. The stranger did not make any effort to talk; and Oman, watching him, sank by degrees into a fit of abstraction in which his memory moved, groping, searching, wandering back through time to find the clew to his recognition of this man. The stranger himself, though probably he had been in a half-starved condition, showed no great eagerness for his food. He ate slowly and little, and seemed to droop forward, while he sat, with the weariness of age; and Oman began to wonder how he had ever reached such a height as the Silver Peak.