to any other creature whom I had encountered since my deliverance.
He seemed so full of silent sympathy: his consideration for my
feelings was so marked and yet so unobtrusive. I have called him a
boy. I am apt to write as the old man I have grown, though I do
believe I felt older then than now. In any case my young friend
was some years my junior. I afterwards found out that he was
six-and-twenty.

I have also called him handsome. He was the handsomest man that I
have ever met, had the frankest face, the finest eyes, the brightest
smile. Yet his bronzed forehead was low, and his mouth rather
impudent and bold than truly strong. And there was a touch of
foppery about him, in the enormous white tie and the much-cherished
whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch
of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown
of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his
walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he
not told me who he was of his own accord.

"By the way," he said, "I ought to give you my name. It's Rattray,
of one of the many Kirby Halls in this country. My one's down in
Lancashire."

"I suppose there's no need to tell my name?" said I, less sadly, I
daresay, than I had ever yet alluded to the tragedy which I alone
survived. It was an unnecessary allusion, too, as a reference to
the foregoing conversation will show.

"Well, no!" said he, in his frank fashion; "I can't honestly say
there is."