That's sensible, and one here and there may happen listen to me." Then John began to consider his own affairs, for his married life had been an expensive one and Harry also a considerable drain on his everyday resources.

He was in the midst of this uncomfortable reckoning, when there was a strong decisive knock at the door.

He said, "Come in," just as decisively and a tall, dark man entered--a man who did not belong to cities and narrow doorways, but whom Nature intended for the hills and her wide unplanted places.

He was handsomely dressed and his long, lean, dark face had a singular attraction, so much so, that it made everything else of small importance.

It was a face containing the sum of human life and sorrow, its love, and despair, and victory; the face of a man that had been and always would be a match for Fate.
John knew him at once, either by remembrance or some divination of his personality, and he rose to meet him saying, "I think you are Ralph Lugur.