he moved with a guilty step to his little sofa, sighed guiltily and
sat down. When the tallow candle with its dim, dilatory flame had
left off flickering and burned up sufficiently to make us both
visible, I could make out what he was like. He was a young man of
two-and-twenty, with a round and pleasing face, dark childlike eyes,
dressed like a townsman in grey cheap clothes, and as one could
judge from his complexion and narrow shoulders, not used to manual
labour. He was of a very indefinite type; one could take him neither
for a student nor for a man in trade, still less for a workman. But
looking at his attractive face and childlike friendly eyes, I was
unwilling to believe he was one of those vagabond impostors with
whom every conventual establishment where they give food and lodging
is flooded, and who give themselves out as divinity students,
expelled for standing up for justice, or for church singers who
have lost their voice. . . . There was something characteristic,
typical, very familiar in his face, but what exactly, I could not
remember nor make out.

For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had
not shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary,
he thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence.
Pulling a sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his
eyes and said irresolutely:

"Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?"

I gave him a knife.

"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself
off a little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece