"He had, moreover, a way of looking you right in the eye without flinching, following yours about like a searchlight without letting go of his hold. His voice, too, was the voice of a man of some refinement--a reed-like voice, like a clarionette, well-modulated, even musical at times, and with an intonation and accent which showed me at once that he was an Englishman. "'I heard what you said last night about the Lancashire dialect,' he began, 'but I didn't like to stand up to speak to you. I was afraid you might not be satisfied with what I could do for you. But I am in such straits to-day that I couldn't help coming, and so I asked the Superintendent for your address. I don't want any money, but I must have some food; if you will help me you will do a kind act. I am out of money, and I may never get any more from home, so that what you do for me I may not be able to repay. I haven't really had much to eat for nearly a week and my strength is giving out. I could hardly get up your stairs.' "All this, remember, without giving me a chance to ask him a single question and without stopping to take breath--just as a book agent rattles on--he standing all the time on my door-sill, his hat in his hand, not as a beggar would carry it, but as some well-bred friend who had dropped in for an afternoon call. Good deal in the way a man holds his hat, let me tell you, when you are sizing a stranger up. That's another one of my beliefs. "I had brought him inside now and he was standing under my skylight, his face and figure making an even better impression on me than when he was in the dark of the doorway. "'And you speak the Lancashire dialect, of course?' I asked, my eyes now taking in the military curl of his mustache, his broad shoulders and the way his really fine head was set upon them. "'No,' he answered; 'to tell you the truth, I do not--not to be of any service to you. I know some words, of course, but not many. I ought to be able to speak it perfectly, for my father's place is in the next county; but I have been a good deal away from home. I didn't come for that; I came because you seemed to me last night to be the sort of a man I could talk to; I meet very few of them; I don't like to stop people in the street, and my clothes now are not fit to enter anyone's office, and it would do no good if I did, for I know no one here.' "'Where have you lived?' I asked. "'Oh, all over; Australia part of the time, three years in Canada----' "'You don't look over twenty-five.' "He dropped his eyes now and looked down at the floor. "'I wish I was,' he answered slowly; 'I might have done differently. You are wrong, I am thirty-one--will be my next birthday. I was home last summer to see my father, but I only stayed an hour with him. He wouldn't talk to me, so I left and came here.' "'Why not?' "'Well, I'd rather not go into that; it's a family matter.' "'Pretty rough, turning you out, wasn't it?' I was getting interested in him now.