“Thanks very much,” the man replied, with the conventional utterance of an English gentleman, which was not lost upon his audience.  “I hope I shall feel up to it.”

“Whoever the fellow is,” said Gregory, as they passed along the verandah a few minutes later, “he has evidently seen better days.  Poor beggar, I wonder where he’s been, and what he has been up to?”

“We shall soon find out,” Dempsey answered.  “All he said when we fished him out of the water was ‘at last,’ and then he fainted clean away.  I am not more curious than my neighbours, but I don’t mind admitting that I am anxious to hear what he has to say for himself.  Talk about Rip Van Winkle, why, he is not in it with this fellow.  He could give him points and beat him hollow.”

An hour later the stranger was so far recovered as to be able to join his hosts at their evening meal.  Between them they had managed to fit him out with a somewhat composite set of garments.  He had shaved off his beard, had reduced his hair to something like order, and in consequence had now the outward resemblance at least of a gentleman.

“Come, that’s better,” said Gregory as he welcomed him.  “I don’t know what your usual self may be like, but you certainly have more the appearance of a man, and less that of a skeleton than when we first brought you in.  You must have been pretty hard put to it out yonder.”

The recollection of all he had been through was so vivid, that the man shuddered at the mere thought of it.

“I wouldn’t go through it again for worlds,” he said.  “You don’t know what I’ve endured.”

“Trading over the border alone?” Gregory inquired.

The man shook his head.

“Tried to walk across from Pekin,” he said, “via Szechuen and Yunnan.  Nearly died of dysentery in Yunnan city.  While I was there my servants deserted me, taking with them every halfpenny I possessed.  Being suspected by the Mandarins, I was thrown into prison, managed eventually to escape, and so made my way on here.  I thought to-day was going to prove my last.”

“You have had a hard time of it, by Jove,” said Dempsey; “but you’ve managed to come out of it alive.  And now where are you going?”

“I want, if possible, to get to Rangoon,” the other replied.  “Then I shall ship for England as best as I can.  I’ve had enough of China to last me a lifetime.”

From that moment the stranger did not refer again to his journey.  He was singularly reticent upon this point, and feeling that perhaps the recollection of all he had suffered might be painful to him, the two men did not press him to unburden himself.

“He’s a strange sort of fellow,” said Gregory to Dempsey, later in the evening, when the other had retired to rest.  “If he has walked from Pekin here, as he says, he’s more than a little modest about it.  I’ll be bound his is a funny story if only he would condescend to tell it.”