Clara tells her readers that she is standing one afternoon in the door of her house when she sees a strange figure. She describes this figure as “ungainly and disproportionate”; his chest is sunken and his head is drooping. The figure has a “body of uniform breadth, supported by long and lank legs” (26) Clara assumes, based on the stranger’s appearance, that he is ignorant and uncouth.

Shortly thereafter, her servant answers a knock at the back door. Clara hears someone ask the maid for a glass of buttermilk. The maid says they have none. The stranger’s rather puzzling reply includes a reference to the Greek trickster god Hermes. The girl repeats that they have no milk to offer.

Clara goes to the door, where she sees the same uncouth stranger. Now, however, Clara reflects that although the stranger’s features are odd and unattractive, they possess a serene radiance, which suggests an intellect of high order. Clara makes a sketch of the stranger’s face and spends a night and a day looking at the picture and brooding on the thought of death while a tempest rages outside. When the storm has dissipated, she wonders if it was a

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