Two sandwiches, an apple, and a glass of water may save a man from starvation, but they do not go far towards satisfying the reviving appetite of a convalescent.

Walking with brisk step down the road, Callandar began to imagine the kind of meal he would order--a clear soup, broiled steak, crisp potatoes--a few little simple things like that! He fingered his pocketbook lovingly, glad that, for the first time in some months, he actually wanted something that money could buy.
Now that noon was past, the intense heat of the morning was tempered by a breeze.

It was still hot and his footsteps raised little cyclones of dust which flew along the road before him, but the oppression in the air was gone, and walking had ceased to be a weariness.

The mile which separated him from Coombe appeared no longer endless, yet so insistent were the demands of his inner man that when a town-going farmer hailed him with the usual offer of a "lift," he accepted the invitation with alacrity.
"Better," he murmured to himself, "the delights of rustic conversation with a good meal at the end thereof than lordly solitude and emptiness withal." But contrary to expectation the rustic declined to converse.

He was a melancholy-looking man with a long jaw and eyes so deep-set that the observer took them on faith, and a nose which alone would have been sufficient to identify him.