The Man in Possession — page 234: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAN IN POSSESSION. 229 ‘‘T hope I did not hurt you,” said the big man. He was very big. Of quite unusual height, but so admirably proportioned that no one would have wished an inch off his stature. ‘¢Oh, no, not at all. . . it was entirely my fault,” said Rivers, glancing up at him with involuntary admiration. They were standing under a lamp-post, and the light fell upon the face of the stranger. It was a very interesting face, all the more so because of the scar that showed so white and strange across the bronzed right cheek. A stern face—a somewhat worn and saddened face, yet the young man felt how far more worthy of admiration and interest than the youth and colouring and well-cut features which his looking-glass represented as his own _ personal attractions. There was no earthly reason why the two men should linger after that brief mutual apology. They were strangers. They had come from totally dif- ferent parts of the world. They had met by pure accident. . . . The chances were that if they had parted then and there they would never have met again. But, for some inexplicable reason, they lingered and began to talk. The ostensible excuse on the part of the big man was that he was a stranger in London, having arrived from the Western States of America a few days before. He asked Tom for some information as to his route along the Embank- ment, and discovered that, owing to the fog and some misdirection on the part of a precocious match- seller, he was going exactly in the opposite direction to that which he desired. ECOMNCE OOO SS) (SO