It was a chilly night, and the fire in the widow's parlour had burnt low.

Her strange companion placed her in a chair, and stooping down before the half-extinguished ashes, raked them together and fanned them with his hat.

From time to time he glanced at her over his shoulder, as though to assure himself of her remaining quiet and making no effort to depart; and that done, busied himself about the fire again.
It was not without reason that he took these pains, for his dress was dank and drenched with wet, his jaws rattled with cold, and he shivered from head to foot.

It had rained hard during the previous night and for some hours in the morning, but since noon it had been fine.

Wheresoever he had passed the hours of darkness, his condition sufficiently betokened that many of them had been spent beneath the open sky.
Besmeared with mire; his saturated clothes clinging with a damp embrace about his limbs; his beard unshaven, his face unwashed, his meagre cheeks worn into deep hollows,--a more miserable wretch could hardly be, than this man who now cowered down upon the widow's hearth, and watched the struggling flame with bloodshot eyes.
She had covered her face with her hands, fearing, as it seemed, to look towards him.