between its boughs, beyond the brilliant vividness of the landscape.
This was crossed by the tall trunks of the eucalyptus trees, all ragged
bark and pendulous foliage, the road striped with their shadows. He
looked down its length, then back along the line of the picket fence, his
glance slowly traveling and finally halting at a place just opposite.

Here his imagination suddenly restored a picture from the past--the
tramp asking for water. His senses, dormant and unobserving, permitted
the memory to attain a lifelike accuracy and the figure was presented to
his inward eye with photographic clearness. Very still in the interest
of this unprovoked recollection, he saw again the haggard face with its
lowering expression, and remembered Chrystie's question about
recognizing the man.

He felt now that he could, even in other clothes and a different
setting. The eyes were unmistakable. He recalled them distinctly--a very
clear gray as if they might have had a thin crystal glaze like a watch
face. The lids were long and heavy, the look sliding out from under them
coldly sullen.

As he pictured them--looking surlily into his--a conviction rose upon
him that he had seen them since then, somewhere recently. They were not
as morose as they had been that first time, had some vague association
with smiles and pleasantness. He was puzzled, for he could only seem to
get them without surroundings, without even a face, detached from all
setting like a cat's eyes gleaming from the dark. Unable to link them to
anything definite he concluded he had dreamed of them. But the
explanation was not entirely satisfactory; he was left with a tormenting
sense of their importance, that they were connected with something that
he ought to remember.