The stranger came early in February, through a biting wind and a driving snow, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his hat hid every inch of his face except the shiny tip of his nose. He staggered into the Coach and Horses inn more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. 'A fire,' he cried, 'in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!' he stamped and shook the snow off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs Hall into her guest parlour. With a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. Mrs Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare him a meal with her own hands. A guest stopping at Iping in the wintertime was very lucky thing to happen, let alone a guest who was no 'haggler', and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her good fortune. As soon as the food was done, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses into the parlour and began to lay them on the table in style. Although the fire was burning briskly, she was surprised to see that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard. His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost in thought. She noticed the melting snow dripping from his shoulders on to her carpet. 'Can I take your hat and coat, sir?' she said, 'and dry them out in the kitchen?' 'No,' he said without turning. She was not sure had heard him, and was about to repeat her question. He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. 'I prefer to keep them on,' he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore big blue goggles, and had side-whiskers that completely hid his cheeks and face above the coat collar. 'Very well, sir,' she said. 'As you like. In a bit the room will be warmer.' He made no answer, and turned his face away from her again; and Mrs Hall, feeling that her efforts at conversation were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things quickly and whished out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man of stone, his back hunched, his colloar turned up, his hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs and bacon, and said a little loudly to him, 'Your lunch is served, sir.' 'Thank you,' he said at the same time, and did not stir until she had closed the door behind her. Then he swung round and approached the table eagerly. As Mrs Hall went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a spoon whisking round a bowl. 'There! I clean forgot it,' she muttered, thinking about the mustard that she had forgotten to give her guest- a new guest at that and one who wanted to stay! She quickly filled the mustard pot, and, putting it grandly upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried it into the parlour. She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved quickly, bending down as if to pick up something from the floor. She put down the mustard pot on the table, and then noticed that the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots stood against the fireplace grill. She went to these things resolutely. 'I suppose I may have them to dry now,' she said in a voice that brooked no denial. 'Leave the hat,' said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her. For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak. He held a white cloth - it was a napkin he had brought with him- over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws were completely hidden, and that was the reason for this muffled voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs Hall. It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed, except his pink, peaked nose. It was bright, pink, and shiny just as it had seemed at first. He wore a dark-brown velvet jacket with a high, black collar turned up about his neck. The thick black hair, escaping below and between the bandages, stuck out like tails and horns, giving him the strangest appearance. This muffled and bandaged head was so unlike what she had expected, that for a moment she stood unmoving. He did not remove the napkin, but stood holding it, as she saw not, with a brown gloved hand, and regarded her from behind his blue glasses. 'Leave the hat,' he said, speaking very clearly through the white cloth. Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. 'I didn't know, sir,' she began, 'that-' and she stopped embarrassed. 'Thank you,' he said drily, glancing from her to the door and them at her again. ‘I’ll have them nicely dried, sir, at once,’ she said, and carried his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his bandaged head and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door, but his napkin was still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she closed the door behind her. ‘I never,’ she whispered. The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his napkin, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, then rose and, taking the napkin in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down. This left the room in a twilight. The done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal. ‘The poor soul’s had an accident or an operation or something,’ said Mrs Hall. ‘what a surprise those bandages did give me, to be sure!’ She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes stand, and lay the traveller’s coat upon it. ‘And the goggles! Why, he looked more like a diving helmet than a man!’ She hung his muffler on a corner of the stand. ‘And holding that handkerchief over his mouth all the time. Talking through it! Perhaps his mouth was hurt too – maybe.’ When Mrs Hall went to clear away the stranger’s lunch, her idea that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in an accident was confirmed, for he was smoking a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room, he never loosened the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face. He sat in the corner with his back to the window and spoke now, having eaten and drunk and being comfortably warm, with less curtness than before. ‘I have some luggage,’ he said, ‘at Bramblehurst station,’ and he asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head quite politely at her explanation. ‘Tomorrow?’ he said. ‘There is no speedier delivery?’ and seemed quite disappointed when she answered, ‘No.’ Was she quite sure? No man with a carriage who would go over? Mrs Hall willingly answered his question and developed a conversation. ‘It’s a steep road by the down, sir,’ she said in answer to the question about a carriage; and then, snatching at an opening, said, ‘It was there that a carriage upturned, a year or so ago. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir, happen in a moment, don’t they?’ But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. ‘They do,’ he said through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his blue glasses. ‘But they take a long time to get well, don’t they? There was my sister’s son, Tom, just cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it in the hayfield, and, bless me! He was three months tied up, sir. You’d hardly believe it. It’s given me a dread of the scythe ever since, sir. ‘I can quite understand that,’ said the visitor. ‘He was afraid, at one point, that he’d have to have an operation – he was that bad, sir.’ The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to bite and kill in his mouth. ‘Was he?’ he said. ‘He was, sir. And no laughing matter for those who had to take care of him, as I had to do – my sister being busy with her little ones so much. There were bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So, if I may be so bold as to ask you, sir –’ ‘Will you get me some matches?’ said the visitor, quite abruptly. ‘My pipe is out.’ Mrs Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him, after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment, and remembered the two sovereign. She went for the matches. ‘Thanks,’ he said briefly, as she put them down, and turned his shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was altogether too discouraging. Clearly he was sensitive about the topic of operations and bandages. But his snubbing had irritated her, and Millie, her maid, faced her bad temper because of it that afternoon.