Her horror-stricken eyes made out the outlines of a dark figure on the couch, an human being, a man who looked to her frightened gaze of giant size. His eyes were closed. He was asleep--or dead? Alice Lorraine stood still trying to think. If the man were asleep, he was a drunken tramp and she must flee. If he were dead--O, so much more must she fly! Not for the world would she be alone with a dead man, a corpse. She must---- On a sudden the figure moved. The man’s eyes opened wide. CHAPTER VIII Before the man on the old couch realized the actuality of the situation and sprang to his feet, his bewildered, incredulous eyes took in perforce the vision of a tall, graceful young girl with dark bands of hair wound about her small head and dark brows and eyes conspicuous in the dusk because of the pallor of her face. But pale as she was, and weak and faint and confused, Alice Lorraine’s fear took flight almost immediately. The first movement of the unknown man startled only to reassure her. He sprang to his feet, but only to shrink back into the corner as if to allow her to fly if she would. He waited a moment for that before he spoke. In the inconsiderable interval, Alice, shaken as she was, saw the man so clearly that she could have given a fairly accurate description of him if she had never seen him thereafter. She saw that he was tall, thin and gaunt, but that his face, worn as it was, was almost the face of a boy. That must have been because of his eyes, which were deep set and wide apart, not large nor dark of colour but at once shy, kind and appealing. As he started to speak, it came to the girl that he was the very image of the man upon whom her thoughts had been dwelling from the moment of her leaving the Hollow, except that he was thinner, more worn, older (save for his eyes) and much more shabby. But gaunt as the man was, he was no ghost. “I beg your pardon. I must have frightened you,” he murmured in a gentle, deprecatory voice which would have been exactly the right sort of voice for the dead musician and which would of itself have reassured Alice had the dusk been so deep as to veil the kindliness of his countenance. “I was--startled,” the girl gasped. “I didn’t know--I never dreamed----” “Of course you didn’t. It was unpardonable in me,” he declared. “But I believed the house yonder was unoccupied. There was no one there all yesterday and no light at night. I could see that there had been someone living there, but I supposed whoever it was had gone--_vamoused_ as we say in the West. I wouldn’t however,--at least I hope I wouldn’t have tried to enter that in any case. But I know this old shop as a boy and I couldn’t resist making an attempt to get in here. Then--I got to thinking of old times and--I have walked many miles during the last week--I threw myself down on the old lounge and fell asleep.” He raised his eyes almost ingenuously to her, for the moment a shy boy.