e more romantic young persons. There was no
dramatic ending to this story,--at least none is remembered by the
present writer.

"He left a name," like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have been
for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which anybody
"grew pale;" for he had swindled no one, and broken no woman's heart with
false vows. Possibly some withered cheeks may flush faintly as they
recall the handsome young man who came before the Cantabridge maidens
fully equipped for a hero of romance when the century was in its first
quarter.

The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had made
his appearance at Arrowhead Village.

It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for the
young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an antipathy. For
what do we understand by that word? When a young lady screams at the
sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural
antipathy to the creature. When a person expresses a repugnance to some
wholesome article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if
he gives the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to
some persons and repulsive to others. We do not pretend to go behind the
fact. It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. Even
between different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike
as well as an elective affinity. We are not bound to give a reason why
Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily
challenges a juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough that he
"does not like his looks."

There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have his
special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and dislikes.
But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should be alleged as
the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of explanations were
suggested, not one of them in the least satisfactory, but serving to keep
the curiosity of inquirers active until they were superseded by a new
theory. One story was that Maurice had a great fear of dogs. It grew at
last to a connected narrative, in which a fright in childhood from a
rabid mongrel was said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near
presence of dogs that he was liable to convulsions if one came close to
him.

This hypothesis had some p