was reeling with horrors which it would have driven the woman or the child mad to read. Scenes too ghastly for a strong mind to dwell upon, incidents too fearful for a weak one to conceive, flitted before the sleepless father.

Now the professor began to do strange and secretive things. Unknown to his wife, unsuspected by his fading child, he began to cause the laboratories of the city and its environs to be searched. In the process, curious trades developed themselves to his astonished ignorance: the tricks of boys who supply the material of anguish; the trade of the janitor who sells it to the demonstrator; the trade of the brute who allures his superior, the dog, to the lairs of medical students. Dark arts started to the foreground, like imps around Mephistopheles concealed. From such repellent education the professor came home and took his little girl into his arms, and did not speak, but laid his cheek to hers, and heard the piteous, familiar question, "Papa, did you promise me they'd be kind to Loveliness?" It was always a whispered question now; for Adah had entirely lost command of her voice, partly from weakness, partly from the old injury to the vocal organs; and this seemed, somehow, to make it the harder to answer her.

So there fell a day when the child in the window, propped by more than the usual pillows, sat watching longer than usual, or more sadly, or more eagerly,—who can say what it was? Or did she look so much more translucent, more pathetic, than on another day? She leaned her cheek on one little wasted hand. Her great eyes commanded the street. She had her pilot's look. Now and then, if a little dog passed, and if he were gray, she started and leaned forward, then sank back faintly. The sight of her would have touched a savage; and one beheld it.

A man in a yellow jersey passed by upon the other side of the street, and glanced over. His straight, black brows contracted, and he looked at the child steadily. As he walked on, it might have been noticed that his brutal head hung to his breast. But he passed, and that cultivated street was clean of him. The carrier met him around the corner, and glanced at him with coldness.

"What's de matter of de kid yonder, in de winder?" asked the foreigner.

"Dyin'," said the carrier shortly.

"Looks she had—what you call him?—gallopin' consum'tion," observed the man with the eyebrows.

"Gallopin' heartbreak," replied the carrier, pushing by. "There's a devil layin' round loose outside of hell that stole her dog,—and she a little sickly thing to start with, —— him! There's fifty men in this town would lynch him inside of ten minutes, if they got a clue to him, —— him to ——!"

That afternoon, when the professor left the house, the newsboy ran up eagerly. "There's a little nigger wants yez, perfesser, downstreet. He's in wid the dog robbers, that nigger is. Jes' you arsk him when he see Mop las' time. Take him by the scruff the neck, an' wallop like hell till he tells. Be spry, now, perfesser!"

The professor hurried down the street, fully prepared to obey these directions, and found the negro boy, as he had been told.

"Come along furder," said the boy, looking around uneasily. He spoke a few words in a hoarse whisper.

The blood leaped to the professor's wan cheeks, and back again.

"I'll show ye for a V," suggested the boy cunningly. "But I won't take no noter hand. Make it cash, an' I'll show yer. Ye ain't no time to be foolin'," added the gamin. "It's sot for termorrer 'leven o'clock. He's down for the biggest show of the term, he is. The students is all gwineter go, an' the doctors along of 'em."

His own university! His own university! The professor repeated the three words, as he dashed into the city with the academic cabman's fastest horse. For weeks his detectives had watched every laboratory within fifty miles. But—his own college! With the density which sometimes submerges a superior intellect, it had never occurred to him that he might find his own dog in the medical school of his own institution. Stupidly he sat gazing at the back of the gamin who slunk beside the aversion of the driver on the box. The professor seemed to himself to be driving through the terms of a false syllogism.

The cabman drew up in a filthy and savage neighborhood, in whose grim purlieus the St. George professors did not take their walks abroad. The negro boy tumbled off the box.

The professor sat, trembling like a woman. The boy went into the tenement, whistling. When he came out he did not whistle. His evil little face had fallen. His arms were empty.

"The critter's dum gone," he said.

"Gone?"

"He's dum goneter de college. Dey'se tuk him, sah. Dum dog to go so yairly."

The countenance of the professor blazed with the mingling fires of horror and of hope. The excited driver lashed the St. George horse to foam; in six minutes the cab drew up at the medical school. The passenger ran up the walk like a boy, and dashed into the building. He had never entered it before. He was obliged to inquire his way, like a rustic on a first trip to town. After some delay and difficulty he found the janitor, and, with the assurance of position, stated his case.

But the janitor smiled.

"I will go now—at once—and remove the dog," announced the professor. "In which direction is it? My little girl—There is no time to lose. Which door did you say?"

But now the janitor did not smile. "Excuse me, sir," he said frigidly, "I have no orders to admit strangers." He backed up against a closed door, and stood there stolidly. The professor, burning with human rage, leaned over and shook the door. It was locked.

"Man of darkness!" cried the professor. "You who perpetrate"—Then he collected himself. "Pardon me," he said, with his natural dignity; "I forget that you obey the orders of your chiefs, and that you do not recognize me. I am not accustomed to be refused admittance to the departments of my own university. I am Professor Premice, of the Chair of Mental Philosophy,—Professor Theophrastus Premice." He felt for his cards, but he had used the last one in his wallet.

"You might be, and you mightn't," replied the janitor grimly. "I never heard tell of you that I know of. My orders are not to admit, and I do not admit."

"You are unlawfully detaining and torturing my dog!" gasped the professor. "I demand my property at once!"

"We have such a lot of these cases," answered the janitor wearily. "We hain't got your dog. We don't take gentlemen's dogs, nor ladies' pets. And we always etherize. We operate very tenderly. You hain't produced any evidence or authority, and I can't let you in without."

"Be so good," urged the professor, restraining himself by a violent effort, "as to bear my name to some of the faculty. Say that I am without, and wish to see one of my colleagues on an urgent matter."

"None of 'em's in just now but the assistant demonstrator," retorted the janitor, without budging. "He's experimenting on a—well, he's engaged in a very pretty operation just now, and cannot be disturbed. No, sir. You had better not touch the door. I tell you, I do not admit nor permit. Stand back, sir!"

The professor stood back. He might have entered the lecture room by other doors, but he did not know it; and they were not visible from the spot where he stood. He had happened on the laboratory door, and that refused him. He staggered out to his cab, and sank down weakly.

"Drive me to my lawyer!" he cried. "Do not lose a moment—if you love her!"