"Come in," I cried, looking up curiously to see who wanted me.

After a momentary delay, the lock moved, and a long, white, bony
hand stole round the door as it opened, gently pushing it over a
fold in the carpet which hindered it from working freely on the
hinges. The hand was followed by a man whose face instantly
struck me with a very strange sensation. There was something
familiar to me in the look of him, and yet it was also something
that suggested the idea of change.

He quietly introduced himself as "Mr. Lorn," presented to me some
excellent professional recommendations, and proposed to fill the
place, then vacant, of my assistant. While he was speaking I
noticed it as singular that we did not appear to be meeting each
other like strangers, and that, while I was certainly startled at
seeing him, he did not appear to be at all startled at seeing me.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I thought I had met
with him before. But there was something in his face, and
something in my own recollections--I can hardly say what--which
unaccountably restrained me from speaking and which as
unaccountably attracted me to him at once, and made me feel ready
and glad to accept his proposal.

He took his assistant's place on that very day. We got on
together as if we had been old friends from the first; but,
throughout the whole time of his residence in my house, he never
volunteered any confidences on the subject of his past life, and
I never approached the forbidden topic except by hints, which he
resolutely refused to understand.